It is our pleasure to welcome Willie Xaiwouth as an Artist-in-Residence at Studio 88. Willie is a Laos multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores memory, identity, ecology, and cultural change through painting, installation, photography, and animation. Rooted in personal experience and local knowledge, Willie’s work reflects on the complex relationship between people, nature, and the shifting conditions of contemporary life. Willie is a member of Lost Jigsaw, an arts-initiatives based in Laos.
Willie’s artistic language often draws from traditional materials, rural landscapes, and symbolic forms, recontextualized through contemporary expression. Works such as Authority of Root and Simulation of Reality examine coexistence, resilience, and the psychological and environmental challenges faced by a new generation. Through these projects, he reflects on how cultural roots persist, transform, or slowly fade within modern social and economic systems.
During his residency at Studio 88, Willie will continue developing interdisciplinary works that respond to place, material, and lived experience. His ongoing research into natural materials such as bamboo, paper, and organic forms, allows him to explore themes of inheritance, sustainability, and continuity across time and geography. The residency offers space to deepen this inquiry through experimentation, collaboration, and reflection.
Through his practice, Willie invites viewers to slow down and reconsider their relationship with the environment and with inherited ways of living. His work offers a quiet yet powerful meditation on coexistence, reminding us that growth, like roots, often begins unseen.
Studio 88 accepts applications on an ongoing basis. Check out our residency program and apply now.
Studio 88 Artist Residency 