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An exhibit at the Palo Alto Art Center, “Pushing Boundaries: Ceramic Artists and Identity,” lives up to its name at many levels. It pushed the boundaries of the curator, Demetri Broxton, who is not a ceramicist but an expert on artists reflecting on identity in their art. It pushed the boundaries of the artists, some of whom had never worked in clay before and others who combined clay with other media in new and interesting ways; and it pushes the boundaries of viewers who are invited to reflect on various innovative ways of exploring identity.
The exhibit features 31 artworks by 19 artists who reflect on their identities, such as their national heritages, their racial and ethnic backgrounds and their sexual orientation. The exhibit also features art installations by multidisciplinary artist Ashwini Bhat, including a large mandala that was created in collaboration with the public at Montalvo Art Center.
The exhibit of the Palo Alto Art Center’s “Centering: Clay and the Community,” a series of three exhibits with a yearlong focus on ceramic art. The first exhibit, held this summer, explored functional ceramics in our daily lives around food and shared meals. The third and final show, which will open in winter 2026, will focus on ceramic artworks related to environmental and cultural sustainability. A yearlong site-specific installation by Bhat, “Being, Longing …,” will be shown concurrently with the three exhibits, addressing themes that cut across all the exhibits.
The current “Pushing Boundaries” exhibit is curated by Demetri Broxton, a Bay Area artist, independent curator, educator and art administrator. He is of Creole and Filipino heritage and creates textile artworks using beads and sequins related to his family background and heritage.
Broxton invited a diverse group of artists to participate from both the Bay Area and Los Angeles who reflect on identity in their artwork, and he deliberately included both older, known artists, as well as younger, up-and-coming artists.
“The exhibition is not only called ‘Pushing Boundaries’ because of the way that the artists are using the medium to tell their stories, but even how the medium is incorporated into their work. I really wanted to, from the curatorial standpoint, push those boundaries,” Broxton said.
Some artists explicitly reflect on their national identities in their artwork. One of the centerpieces in the exhibit is Anabel Juarez’ “Recuerdos (Memories),” which consists of two open, multi-tiered metal carts with wheels and covered with a roof. The carts are full of colorful ceramic objects representing her memories of growing up in Mexico and moving back and forth across the border. Some of the objects include a butterfly, a teddy bear, a Madonna, kitchen utensils and California poppies.
The carts are inspired both by the pushcarts of street vendors who work along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as the multiple meanings of “home” for an immigrant. In Broxton’s view, Juarez’ piece, “represents the entire idea of literally pushing the boundaries.” He notes that “what is home is permeable through that physical barrier and going through this kind of metaphorical border, as well.”
Another artwork reflecting national heritage is Kristiana Chan’s piece, “The Flesh in My Teeth,” which looks like a fishing net but is made of sterling silver chains attached to acrylic tubes. Hanging from the silver chains are cast porcelain anchovies, as well as dried anchovies covered in crystallized sea salt, invoking the livelihood of Chinese immigrants and the smell of fish.
“It’s not only this beautiful object, but when you start to get into what the artist is thinking of in terms of the Chinese diasporic experience and recounting some of the symbols that were prevalent (as) both symbols of cultural pride of people immigrating and bringing their culture with them to the Bay Area,” Broxton said.
“But then how that also leads into, from a Western standpoint, this ‘repulsive’ idea of men (living in) fishing villages (with) hanging fish and how that was kind of weaponized against Chinese immigrants.”
Broxton noted that some Westerners highlighting such cultural differences helped lay the foundations for the Chinese Exclusion Act, a 1882 law that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States.
However, “Chan transforms anchovies into vessels of pride and persistence,” according to the label written by Broxton.
Two other pieces that reflect on national identity are Maryam Yousif’s glazed stoneware reliefs, “Sailing Face” and “Heart of Palm.” Born in Iraq, Yousif draws from her Middle Eastern heritage by showing a woman entangled with a palm tree. In one piece (“Sailing Face”), a woman’s face is resting on the lower part of a palm tree trunk while her hair is wrapped around the upper part of the trunk. In the other piece (“Heart of Palm”), a woman is standing under a bent palm tree trunk, dressed in a black dress with multiple colorful accents. Broxton notes that the palm tree is native to Southeast Asia, so similar to Yousif “(the trees) are also immigrants that become very much aligned with certain places in our imagination, our thoughts of home.”
Another group of artworks reflect on racial and ethnic identity. One example is Rose B. Simpson’s ceramic sculpture, “Copilot 1,” which is anchored by steel and decorated with natural and precious materials. Simpson is an Indigenous artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, who integrates Pueblo pottery with contemporary art forms as a way to honor her ancestry. Broxton explains that “the very material of this piece, embodies her cultural heritage.” He also emphasizes that “the place where it is situated (in the exhibit), she becomes this guardian kind of figure that is overlooking the entire gallery.”
Cathy Lu’s piece, “Yellow Tears,” also offers a reflection on race. Two large, ceramic eyes, modeled on Lu’s own eyes, with large black eye lashes and painted brown peach pits as irises stare at the viewer from the wall. Four tubes of water run from each corner of the eyes, with “tears” falling into a plastic container of yellow water on the floor, symbolizing the racial identification of her and other Asian Americans as “yellow.” Broxton said that the piece “makes us really confront racialized language, like thinking about how we call people by their color or we judge them by the color of their skin.”
Some pieces also reflect on sexual identity. Andres Payan Estrada’s “Visiones Noctures (Nocturnal Visions)” displays a ceramic-covered disco ball hanging from the ceiling and rotating low over the ground. Spotlights illuminate the ball and printed chiffon hanging behind the ball, which in turn reflect light on the floor and wall. In Broxton’s view, the disco ball represents a nightclub, “a place where people go to find joy, to find connection with one another, especially within a queer space.” However, “it is also, in this current historical moment, we think about massacres that have happened within queer nightclubs. So, it really balances this line between celebration and then also this violent memory,” he said.
Another artwork reflecting sexual identity is Matt Lambert’s “Blue Monday’s Babe Born on a Wednesday.” It is a sculpture in animal form made of blue-glazed ceramic, covered with ceramic flowers and leaves taken from an old chandelier, as well as shiny beads and sequins. Broxton said that “working with these jewelry items, these sparkly things have direct connection to the body because we generally adorn ourselves with those things, so there is this intimacy.”
Featured alongside the “Pushing Boundaries” exhibit are the yearlong site-specific installations by Ashwini Bhat, “Being, Longing…,” which consist of three artworks. Bhat is a multidisciplinary artist from Southern India who explores the intersections between body and nature, self and other. At a community event at Montalvo Art Center in July 2025, she co-created a mandala called “Collective Earth,”inviting the public to participate in the South Asian practice of foot wedging clay, in which you step on clay to remove air bubbles and flatten it.
She then fired and decorated the mandala in black, orange, green, and blue colors, and included an outline of her own body in the center of the mandala. A video of the creation of the mandala at Montalvo Art Center is shown next to the artwork.
A second artwork by Bhat consists of another video that shows her foot wedging a piece of clay on her own (a work called “Earth Under Our Feet”). This piece of unfired clay became the screen on which the video is projected and thus is much rougher than the fired and glazed mandala. The last piece of art in the installation, “Belonging,” is a pink neon sign that reads “Belonging” but periodically lights up to show the words Being and Longing, the collective name of her art installations. We further hear Bhat’s recorded voice commenting on the artworks.
Broxton observed that when “someone migrates to a place, you not only bring your own culture with you, but you become part of that culture and that culture in turn changes because of you being part of it.”
“Pushing Boundaries: Ceramic Artists and Identity” is on view through Dec. 7 at the Palo Alto Art Center, 1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto; tinyurl.com/PushingBoundariesPAArtCenter.
