Life & Work with Xiaochen Lu of Arts District

Today we’d like to introduce you to Xiaochen Lu.

Hi Xiaochen, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My name is Xiaochen Lu and I usually go by Eric. I am a graduate student of the USC Roski Master of Fine Arts class of 2027 cohort. My art practice revolves around topics of mark-making, social activism and materiality, and my favorite mediums are photography, cyanotype and ceramics. I earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024. Los Angeles is very different from Chicago, which will always have a special place in my heart, but I love both cities.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. When I was attending SAIC back in Chicago, the winters were brutal and I would usually plunge into seasonal depression of sorts, and my family back in China was also going through some pretty rough changes which was hard for me. But thankfully my community and the people of Chicago in general were so supportive and sweet, which is a big reason why I managed to push through my undergraduate program. After I moved to LA in 2025, for a period of time I felt really paranoid and worried because of my status as an international student and non-citizen, but my USC cohort and other friends here in LA showed me true support and love, for which I will be forever grateful.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I come from a photography background. I started doing photography since 2013 and I do a lot of documentary photography. My latest documentary photography project is about my trip to Ukraine this summer named “8 Days in Kyiv.” Here at USC, I mainly do cyanotype and ceramics. I started doing the former in 2021 and the latter when I came here last year. The underlying reason why I do cyanotype and ceramics so much these days is because both are so handmade and analog. When the audience sees my work, they see something that I made contact with using my own hands. And I hope to establish a somewhat intimate relationship with my viewers by showing something that I literally touched at some point. In terms of the concepts that I have been exploring, I engage a lot with the human condition, speaking up for oppressed groups as well as the Sisyphean desire to leave behind marks despite knowing the inescapable eroding forces of Nature.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I think one of the biggest risks I have taken in my art practice so far is deciding to dive into ceramics. As I mentioned before, I had zero experience in ceramics when I first started at USC in August 2025. Thanks to my professor Thomas Müller, ceramics lab technician Farzan and a lot of fellow classmates, I began to feel the clay, understand how it reacted and how to ensure it behaved the way I wanted it to. At the end it was superbly rewarding. The versatility of clay is something I had never felt before with any other medium. I love how it interacts with cyanotype especially considering cyanotype is traditionally to be applied on paper. In terms of risk-taking in general, I do believe that taking risks is tremendously beneficial and even essential for artists. This is because I think art making is always about revolution and bringing something new to the table. In the context of contemporary art, I doubt that something will be overtly impactful if it only relies on things from the past.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://xiaochen-eric-lu.net
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/eric.lu.xv
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-lu-5a6985288/?isSelfProfile=true

Image Credits
Personal photo credits: Cube Li