Abyssal is about what is on land and in the ocean and what connects the two through migration and the ocean itself. It traces the history of porcelain, of Europe and Asia, of transpacific migration, of women’s labor, and its lack of recognition, of the intertidal. When first imported to Europe, porcelain was a mystery. True Chinese porcelain is luminous—when held up to the light, it appears translucent. Europeans didn’t know how it was made, conjecturing that it was made from seashells. Kings hired alchemists to find the recipe for porcelain, and they eventually made it themselves with a different type of clay. This initial contact with Asia and China set up the dynamic of desire—the mystery of the object that underpins the West’s view of the East. This dynamic carries through to the present day culturally, specifically through the desire and objectification of Asian women’s bodies. Bodies that labor and give care.

University of Oregon 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research

Thursday, October 9: Meg Onli- Critical Conversations, Critics and Curators Tour Lecture: “Some Notes on Curating”

Thursday, October 9, 4:00 p.m.
Lawrence Hall, Room 115, 1190 Franklin Boulevard, Eugene, OR
Lectures videos are archived on YouTube.

Meg Onli is the Nancy and Fred Poses Curator at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Onli has worked as the Andrea B. Laporte Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, most recently as Director and Curator of The Underground Museum, Los Angeles. She has curated such exhibitions Speech/Acts (2017), Colored People Time: Mundane Features, Quotidian Pasts, Banal Presents (2019), and Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation (2021) with Erin Christovale. She was appointed to curate the 2024 Whitney Biennial alongside Chrissie Iles.

This lecture is made possible by the Critical Conversations program, a partnership between the Ford Family Foundation and the University of Oregon Department of Art’s Center for Art Research (CFAR), to bring prominent curators and critics to Oregon to engage with artists statewide. This element of the program is a rotating collaboration with art organizations across the state to connect prominent national and international curators, critics, and writers with Oregon-based artists for in-depth studio visits.

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Tyler Hays “The Art of Making Everything”