Lan Xu

My work begins in the body — in breath, in stillness, in the friction between the digital and the felt. As a multimedia artist working across installation, sound, video, photography, and poetry, I am drawn to the places where technology overwhelms and the places where it can be reclaimed as a contemplative tool. I came to art through two simultaneous channels: a formal training in Integrated Digital Media at NYU and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a deeper, slower education in meditation, internal martial arts, and herbal healing that began in 2009. These two streams have never been separate in my practice. Club Crystal Blue, which I founded in Brooklyn in 2020, is where the work becomes embodied. Named for the crystalline blue-white light of diamonds — clarity under pressure — it is a space for sound baths, workshops, and healing work that extends the questions my art asks: How do we find stillness inside media overwhelm? What does it mean to be present in a post-Internet body? I believe health is a dance between wellness and challenge. My practice is a record of that dance.

NYU
SAIC