“I hope people who buy my work appreciate not only its function, but also the time, material and decisions involved in making it.”
Mengya, known as Mon, makes ceramics in London: cups, vases, wall tiles and small sculptures such as animal heads. She works mainly by hand-building, and also throws on the wheel. Her surfaces are often rough and textured, taken from tree bark and the forest floor, and she sometimes draws into the clay with a needle or with underglaze.
Much of her work starts in Epping Forest, where she walks, photographs twisted branches and moss, and reads the folklore of spirits said to hide in trees. She uses folklore from East and West as a way of reconnecting people with nature, the way old stories once explained the natural world. Her ceramic series Bodies of Nature, made in 2024 and 2025, presses the human body into clay with the textures of soil and bark.
Alongside clay, Mon makes prints and zines about ecology, myth and the body, including her self-published zine Queer in Eco.
Mon trained in painting, including traditional Chinese painting, and took a BA in Fine Art at Xiamen University in China. She then moved to London for an MA in Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, which she completed with distinction, spending most of her time in the print and ceramics studios. She now teaches at Ceramics Classes London and runs workshops, including at Wilderness Festival and the Feminist Library.
