b. 1974
Renee So was born in Hong Kong in 1974 and grew up in Melbourne, Australia. So lives and works in London. Spanning numerous traditional craft techniques including ceramics, hand-woven textiles and furniture, So's work is centred around representations of the female figure in prehistoric cultures. She bestows monumental grandeur and caricatural qualities to the figures in her works, which weave together a pattern of cross-cultural references. These include prehistoric Europe, Africa and Meso-America as well as ancient Egypt, Assyria and China. Her fictional personas borrow from ancient ritual masks, military and aristocratic portraiture.