On Erring: Panda at Shanghai Seminary
- Nicole Liu
- Feb 24
- 13 min read
Updated: Apr 4
'Panda' invitation card. Courtesy of Shanghai Seminary.
It starts with an invitation card that doesn't quite work. One side contains details of the exhibit in a handwritten font (June 7th-August 2nd; Panda,, Caitlyn Min-ji Au; Opening Reception June 7th, 3-8pm; Seeing pandas at the Lincoln Park Zoo w/ the artist's family, July 4th, 11am). The other side appears to be a blur of black-and-white TV static. I squint, tilting the card left, right, near, far. 'There's a panda in the middle!' I joke, which Qiuchen Wu — the curator known as 'Q' to his friends — quickly denies while looking mildly scandalized. Later, after another 10-15 minutes of fiddling, someone else in the room finally gets it: a parade of turtles dancing across the snow. We are then told that the turtles can only be seen when our eyes are out of focus. I try again: still no turtle.
Installation view of 'Panda' at SHANGHAI SEMINARY
Next is the exhibit. Shanghai Seminary, where Panda is held, is a ground-level storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago that opened its first show in November 2024 with Q as its sole manager. Upon entering on opening night, I see that the door is blocked by a gigantic, cubic structure made of flesh-pink insulation foam-boards. Towards the back of the gallery, there is also a neon green, elliptical cylinder mounted on a rectangular, plywood table. The table appears to be suspended above a rectangular hole incised into the gallery floor — but, upon closer inspection, the hole turns out to be a large mirror. The two structures are connected by a thin, plywood bridge that slopes down the green cylinder until it cuts off mid-spiral. There are no guardrails on the bridge.
Installation view of 'Panda' at SHANGHAI SEMINARY. Caitlyn Min-ji Au, 'Strawberry', 2025, wood, insulation foam, foam underlayment, Roborock Q7 Max, mirrors, velvet, imitation shark fin, ceramic figurine, fountain, dimension variable. Photo: Brian Griffin
As I tiptoe my way around the two structures, I also notice two sources of sound, one of which — a scuttling noise, like a tape recorder being scrubbed in short bursts — comes from the top of the pink cube and is inching closer to the edge. All of us look up: a roomba's busy tentacles are brushing against the wooden bridge. I hold my breath as the little machine — in fussy, tentative box-steps — tries to align itself onto the bridge. After several back-and-forths, the roomba finally launches itself industriously onto the narrow plank. It reaches the green cylinder and sniffs its way down the spiral like a blind terrier or a very large beetle. It occasionally halts against the side of the cylinder, its tentacles sweeping over the edges of the plank. Finally, it stops where the ledge cuts off, as if astride a cliff, presiding over a void.
Installation view of 'Panda' at SHANGHAI SEMINARY. Caitlyn Min-ji Au, 'Strawberry', 2025. Photo: Brian Griffin
Reassured by the roomba's pause into existential dread, I turn back to the pink cube for some further confirmation. Through the occasional narrow 'windows' cut into the sides of the pink cube, I see the smooth curves of ramps that seem to descend from the top of the pink cube all the way into a maze-like interior, complete with internal windows and carpeted in strips of dark green velvet. They've built a pastel zoo enclosure.
I point at the roomba. 'Is that the panda?'
'What panda?' Both of Q's eyebrows are raised: 'the show is called Panda, but the exhibit in the gallery is titled Strawberry.'
At this point, I'm a little lost. Q gestures at the printed program that I've been clutching and ignoring. At the bottom of the page and in crisp, small letters: Strawberry. The program also contains a blue map. Q explains that the roomba drew this map by documenting its own movements. Initially, the artist meant to program the roomba so that it can move inside the pink cube, but she quickly realized that the roomba computes its movements 2-dimensionally and is incapable of recognizing different layers atop of each other. It kept on getting stuck inside the pink cube. Most of the ramps and pathways inside the pink cube are, thus, unusable to the roomba. I stare at the blue map: a confident elliptical is connected by a single line to a frazzled sea urchin. 'What does this have to do with strawberries?' I ask, not bothering to hide my despair. Q raises only one eyebrow this time. 'It's from a k-pop song that came up when we were assembling the structures in the gallery. Do you want one?' He hands me a bowl: fresh strawberries stare up at me blankly. They are blood red, nothing like the neon green and pastel pink pairing of the structures surrounding us.
I want to dive off a cliff. Reception error code: Beep Beep Be-e-e-e-e-ep!
🐼🍓🐼🍓🐼🍓
Let me try again.
On the printed program, we are told that the artist Caitlyn Min-ji Au 'is a Chicago-based artist from Portland, Oregon. She holds an MFA from the University of Chicago and a BFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design'. I speculate from the bio's emphasis on the artist's accomplishments — instead of further elaborations of her identity or cultural history — that, despite naming her exhibit with the overdetermined 'Panda', Au wants to carefully manage just how much 'East Asia' and/or 'Asia/America' may structure the audience's approach to her works
Installation view of 'Panda' at SHANGHAI SEMINARY. Caitlyn Min-ji Au, 'Strawberry', 2025. Photo: Brian Griffin
The signifiers of Asia present at Strawberry are easy to spot but hard to grasp. Under the green cylinder, a small porcelain statue of a longevity god is placed upon the giant mirror as if floating in space. The statue itself looks generic: a figurine that can be found in Asian souvenir stores or even occasional trinket shops in Chinatowns.
Installation view of 'Panda' at SHANGHAI SEMINARY. Caitlyn Min-ji Au, 'Strawberry', 2025. Photo: Brian Griffin
The printed program promises two more treasures. One of them, 'imitation shark fin', I find as I crouch down once again next to the pink cube and peer into one of the window-slits at the bottom. I know from my childhood spent in various south-east Asian locations that imitation shark fin is a food ingredient and essentially rice vermicelli, meant to evoke the texture of its much pricier namesake. Inside the giant cube, where the dimness transforms the skin-soft pink blush of the cube's outer layer into maroon shades of sinew and heart muscle, the reflection of the imitation shark fin sits inside a small mirror. I crane my neck left and right, but the narrowness of the window slit prevents me from seeing where the actual shark fin is placed.
Installation view of 'Panda' at SHANGHAI SEMINARY. Caitlyn Min-ji Au, 'Strawberry', 2025. Photo: Brian Griffin
The last element takes me two tries to find. I realise that there is some space between the structures and the gallery walls. As I squeeze myself behind the pink cube, I quickly notice that it is subtly placed at an angle to the wall: what appears to be a pathway is actually a dead end. I walk around to the other side where a third window-slit hides. Inside the cube, illuminated by sensual shades of dark red (like the insides of an eyelid when closing one's eye under the sun), a minuscule sculpture of a fountain sits delicately at the edge of dark felt. I overhear Au, who is present at the opening, explaining to another attendee that the imitation shark fin is dried-up, but the water of the fountain statue will revive it (there is no actual water in the fountain statue). From what I can see, the fountain statue is placed in a separate section of the cube from the imitation shark fin. The only way for the water to 'get' to the shark fin is for the viewer to hold the idea of water in their mind as they repeat the roundabout journey between the two windows.
Installation view of "Panda" at SHANGHAI SEMINARY. Caitlyn Min-ji Au, 'Strawberry', 2025. Photo: Brian Griffin
I also investigate the other source of sound that softly repeats in the space. The giant mirror under the green cylinder reflects a TV monitor hidden inside the cylinder, where — to my shock — old Cantonese shows from TVB are playing on-loop. It is also at this point that I begin to realize my most mortifying mistake of the afternoon.
In a last-ditch effort, I grab Q and whisper to him furiously. 'I thought Caitlyn is Korean?'
'I suppose the name Min-ji does sound a little Korean,' Q muses, 'but her family's from Hong Kong.'
Error! Error!! Beep! Beep! Be-e-e-e-e-ep!!
🐼🍓🐼🍓🐼🍓
Let me try again, again.
I am fairly good at recognizing my distances from another person in America and calibrating, by extension, my ability to understand their work. Given the auto-stereogram printed onto the show's calling card, I entered the gallery expecting to learn about how Au deals with potential themes of distance, optical illusions, and mis/recognition through her works (which are, to my mind, also quite reasonable ideas explored in an Asian-American artistic context). I didn't expect that I would misrecognize an obvious fact about the artist, especially when her family connections to Asia are excruciatingly close to my own. Despite the clues in plain sight, I even failed to recognize that her last name 'Au' is a uniquely Cantonese one. I've been stumbling around the gallery like the world's clumsiest detective.
The embarrassment of shooting — and missing — something so close to home prompts me to do something I wasn't going to do. I start to ask personal questions about the artist: her motives, her biography, her recent experiences — all the things that the exhibit's minimalist program descriptions seem to have dismissed as irrelevant. Au responds to me good-naturedly. No, she grew up in America. Yes, she just visited Hong Kong for the first time in a long-time last Christmas. No, she doesn't really speak Cantonese, but she understands the language from her parents. No, the name Strawberry is not really meant to be a translingual pun — 'What do you mean?' She asks, and I hurry to explain that the word for 'strawberry' is different in Mandarin and Hong Kong Cantonese. In Mandarin it is 草莓 (cǎo méi, literally: grass berry) but in Hong Kong Cantonese it is 士多啤梨 (si6 do1 be1 lei2, a transliteration of the English pronunciation). The distinction in word choice can sometimes act as a shibboleth between Hong Kong Cantonese speakers and other users of various Chinese languages. 'I didn't know that!' Au admits openly. She turns to Q, 'maybe we should include that detail on the website.' They both seem delighted, which almost convinces me that I've redeemed myself.
Au's interaction with Q, however, further confuses me. Here is some new information: whatever logic at work that connects the entire Strawberry - Panda project together is not a closed loop. Sometimes it can even absorb new intel: my desperate comment about Hong Kong Cantonese somehow qualifies and enters circulation. I am at a further loss: finally gauging a 'more correct' distance between myself and the artist does not, in fact, allow me to recognize the overall logics underpinning the design of this giant apparatus. Some revelations were had, but the plot remains thickened. Now, what?
I find myself in a hilarious yet intense state of paranoia. Certainly, Strawberry contains components that lend themselves to a more explicit diasporic reading: the figurines and the Cantonese TVB drama, for example, seem so specific that thoughts towards 'Asia' are inevitable. And yet the specificity of these cultural signifiers also ends where the broad ambiguity of 'Asian' began. The more I think about the figurines, the more enigmatic they become, precisely because their concreteness seems so out of place when contrasted with the alien neutrality of the sculptures that house them. Despite being embedded into the two giant statues, the figurines seem strangely detachable, as if they can be easily replaced by other tokens of local culture. Surely, Strawberry can still function even if Au is actually Korean, where the shark fin is replaced by [insert dried food ingredient of Korean cuisine] and the Cantonese TVB programs are replaced by [insert nostalgic K-drama].
Although cultural objects in Strawberry appear like footholds of certainty into understanding the artwork, they prompt more slippage. I find myself dissembling my pursuit for increasingly specific answers towards more diffuse ideas about the many mo(ve)ments of arriving at something — transforming myself, I suppose, from a hunter into a fisherman. Do the three figurines have the same relationship to the two large structures, or do they signal three distinct ways of understanding spatial arrangement? I track the ways these cultural signifiers re-route my investigative path, both in the invasive questions I pose for Au and in the irreverent way I move around the gallery. 'Can I touch this?' I say as I pet the blush-colored walls of the pink cube, noting that it does feel skin soft and almost warm. 'Not really.' Q is taken aback and I quickly stop. He stares at me: 'People don't usually do that in galleries you know.' 'I know!!' I feel my entire face go pink.
Given how readymade the three objects are — in many ways more 'recognisable' than the giant, alien structures that house them — it is easy to focus on their concreteness and let the rest of the structures blur in the periphery. Because the structures have entered the architectural dimensions, they make it hard for the viewer to imagine their assemblage via human hand. It feels much easier to categorize the structures as mere background — the easels instead of the proper canvas. That said, when two such massive sculptures loom in such a small gallery, what is sculpted is less the structures themselves and more the space around them and, eventually, the physical and intellectual movements of the visitors. Again and again, the structures tempt me to go back to look and think beyond what is normally permissible in a polite, gallery setting: did I miss anything? Did I see everything? Should seeing everything be the aim? Can I put my head there? Or my arm? Can I touch? Can I ask?
And I do, in the end, see and ask and poke and touch, repeatedly and often not waiting for permission, throwing my self-consciousness out the window and feeling a lot less chastised even when I am stopped. Making a mistake during Panda feels incredibly low stakes, even playful. Seeing if stray, messy bits of information can be added to Panda sometimes causes dissensus, but it is also fun. Not to beat this point to death, but my sense of kinship towards the hapless roomba increases with every incomplete loop I make around the two sculptures, with every small and unmistakably awkward exertion I undertake as I tiptoe or bend down to look into one of the windows. By the time I leave the gallery, I know how to move around the sculptures because when I tried something and it didn't work out, I tried something else. I've learnt my way around the space Au carved with her structures — and, as such, I've earned my way around her topographical map.
At home, I look up the K-pop song that accidentally gave Strawberry its title. At one point in the music video, the singer of Strawberry Rush rides a pale pink vespa while speeding down a rainbow race track across the galaxy and singing 'Delta, callin' it out, 불안한 signal, 착지 오류 삐착지 오류 삐, 착지 오류 삐, 착지 오류 삐-이-이-이-이-이' She flashes a big smile.
Delta, calling it out, unstable signal, landing error beep. Landing error beep, landing error beep, landing error be-e-e-e-e-eep.
🐼🍓🐼🍓🐼🍓
Let's loop it back.
The story of how Panda got its name comes out while we are looking at monkeys during the exhibit's advertised tour. When Au was little and on a similar zoo outing, Au's father mistook a monkey for a panda to the delight of the entire family. This incident became a core memory that Au held onto for years. I ask Au's father what he thought of Strawberry. 'Things are not what they seem,' he replies. Fair enough. We stay at the primate enclosure for another 40 minutes, before shuffling our way towards the penguins. Lincoln Park Zoo still doesn't have any giant pandas.
The tour itself is a recommended — not required — part of the Panda experience. As I slowly loop around Lincoln Park Zoo, I think about the differences and distances between errors (coincidences, misrecognitions, mistakes, accidents, echoes, stray thoughts) and the kind of erring that can be considered Panda-relevant. The presence of Q and Au makes them easy soundboards for my echolocation. 'Asking,' it appears, is crucial for anyone who does want wrestle with Panda seriously. Here, Shanghai Seminary's particular curatorial approach shines. Beyond the zoo tour, Q, who oversees every detail of the gallery's operations, also makes himself available at almost all exhibitory periods, implicitly integrating real-time discussion and feedback into part of the exhibition process. Rigorous conversation with Q, who introduces this work to visitors when Au is not available, sharpens one's experience of the shows. For Panda, specifically, these conversations enter into an open-source loop that the show's diffuse yet insistent logic organizes, absorbs, and circulates.
I return to Strawberry a couple of weeks after the zoo visit, trying to make sure that I'm not making a mountain out of a mole hill. In hindsight, it is a little strange that I spent the majority of my first visit obsessing over the cultural interpretations of the three ready-made objects, when the two sculpted structures are what the artist exerted the most physical labor constructing. These two structures are easily seen as symbiotic, contrastive pairs. The pink cube conceals many secret passageways that don't quite work, the green cylinder exposes a single path that somewhat does. Meanwhile, the wooden beams and the insulation pads are all building materials usually hidden behind the plaster walls of a proper building. Meanwhile, the mirrors inside the pink cube and underneath the green cylinder simultaneously show and obscure: it is almost impossible to look directly at the objects they reflect; one can only watch the TVB program as an inverse image, the subtitles of the rapid dialogue are basically unreadable.
During the zoo tour, I wondered about the surprising interactiveness of the exhibit: to what degree can visitors experience the Panda apparatus independent of Q and Au's presence? Perhaps this is yet another question that should be allowed to err without gravitating towards certainty. The easiest way to verify whether something is Panda-relevant is to join the circulation even outside of Au and Q's approval. A list of potential Panda moments emerges during the zoo tour: the Zoo map shows that the park is designed as a loop; Q shares strawberry-flavored, panda-shaped cookies with the attendees; Au's father's favorite Cantonese film-director is the brother of my mother's favorite Hong Kong singer (for a while I thought we were talking about the same person). My favorite moment happens at the end of the visit, when the red pandas of Lincoln Park Zoo makes a rare appearance: one of them takes a nap in the middle of a single wooden beam within its enclosure. Red pandas, I suggest to Au and Q, are not related to pandas or raccoons, which are, to my mind, their immediate kin in name and appearance. They are magnets of mistaken identification.
I couldn't tell from Au or Q's expressions whether this qualified as Panda-relevant. No matter. Everyone stumbles their own way towards something, but certain structures have the power to lure, train, and linger one's mind into constantly probing. Au's sculptures are striking because the patterns of almost-recognition they spark in her audiences somehow remain both unnamed and distinct. In her playful monuments of misdirections, us machines must (re)discover (un)known pathways, incessantly.
'It is really easy to see, once you find it,' Q said of the hidden turtles on the Panda calling cards, the ones that I have yet to find.