SEPTEMBER 18 - NOVEMBER 8, 2025

Exhibition Opening with the Artist
Thursday, September 18th, 6 - 8 PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Invisible Hand, a solo exhibition of ceramic work by artist Stephanie H. Shih. The gallery will host a public opening reception with the artist on Thursday, September 18th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. This will be Shih’s first exhibition with SOCO Gallery.

Invisible Hand will transform the gallery into a grocery store stocked with food items that illuminate the unseen labor sustaining everyday consumption. With a focus on the intersection of industrial food systems and immigrant identity, Shih reveals the human effort—often performed by undocumented workers—embedded in the foods Americans consume daily. From the gentle harvesting of soft berries to the meticulous trimming of cabbage and the hand-butchered meat fed into machines, these acts of labor remain largely invisible.

Shih notes that in the United States, migrant laborers have long occupied a precarious position—frequently exploited, yet viewed as economic threats in a zero-sum system. Referencing the nation’s first ethnicity-based immigration law, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Shih feels that this exemplifies this legacy, targeting Chinese workers who were essential to the country’s growth amid fears from white laborers that immigrants were taking jobs and driving down wages.  She adds “this act set the stage for a broader pattern of racialized labor exploitation that continues to shape the U.S.’s immigration and labor policies today.”

Invisible Hand includes not only Shih’s sculptures but her first stained-glass mosaic: a label from a vintage can of Charlotte peaches. In Carolina’s Pride Peaches, each of the hundreds of pieces of stained glass were hand-cut in a laborious process–a new direction for Shih. In the work, a woman holding a peach is a prominent part of the design, nodding to the exhibition theme as the model’s hand is seen but not the worker’s.

Shih made an effort to incorporate regional products; however, it was not her intention for the exhibition to convey such a distinctly Southern feel. That effect emerged organically, likely due to the significant concentration of agricultural activity—and consequently, migrant labor—in the Southern United States.

The exhibition title, Invisible Hand, references the  illusion that consumer goods simply arrive on shelves in the modern supermarket without human touch. Shih dismantles this myth, urging viewers to recognize the labor—deliberate, skilled, and often hidden—behind food products. By rendering these everyday items in clay, a material historically associated with permanence, she imbues them with a sense of dignity that the labor behind them is rarely afforded. With a fun and nostalgic element that first draws in the viewer, Shih’s work is a quiet yet insistent reminder that every item we consume carries with it a story, a history, and a personal touch.

Stephanie H. Shih (b. 1986, Philadelphia, PA)

Stephanie H. Shih renders outdated consumer goods as trompe l'oeil sculptures that reveal the tensions within American domestic life. Turning everyday items—a Thighmaster, a self-help book, many pantries' worth of condiments—into intricately painted ceramic objects transformed each into a permanent artifact. Seen together, the works play with notions of timelessness and obsolescence, nostalgia and disillusionment.

Shih’s work has been exhibited at James Cohan, New York, NY; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA; Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY; and is held in the permanent collections of museums across the country, including Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA.  Among other accolades, Shih was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2025 and the NYFA Artist Fellowship in 2023. Shih’s engagement with social issues extends beyond her craft; since 2017, she has raised $800,000 for disenfranchised communities facing material instability and deportation.