Sam Hsieh is an artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. She draws from a transitory upbringing between Arkansas, California, and Taiwan—experiences that shape her exploration of identity, displacement, and cultural memory. Hsieh investigates modes of representation to reframe the spatial and symbolic significance of everyday objects, particularly within domestic environments.
Hsieh has experience as an educator and instructor at UC Berkeley in the Architecture and History of Art departments. Her work has been selected for the UC Berkeley NAAB Exhibition in 2024 and has been displayed at the 2024 Thesis Exhibition.
Bio
My work explores how memory lives through material and form. I am drawn to ordinary objects and structures that carry traces of touch and use. These forms are familiar yet fleeting, tied to moments that often pass unnoticed but gain meaning when revisited. Much of this interest comes from a personal experience of loss and instability. Moving frequently and losing my father at a young age made me attuned to how fragile memory can be, and how the most mundane details can take on extraordinary weight over time.
With a background in both fine art and architecture, my practice consists of functional and nonfunctional objects that create vignettes. Each object hopes to solidify a piece of a memory that otherwise would have been lost. Each work becomes both a framed scene and a memorial of a fleeting moment. The results are strange, familiar, and handmade. I hope to create objects that resonate beyond my own story, carrying the tenderness and impermanence of memory into shared experience.