2025 marks the launch of a new series of thematic exhibitions, the MoNA Invitationals, which celebrate contemporary Northwest Art in the region. Each MoNA Invitational exhibition will highlight a selection of Pacific Northwest artists who are making some of today’s most important and timely work. MoNA Invitationals’ themes will range in focus from specific mediums and/or genres, to relevant narratives that define the current cultural landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

 Build Me Up, Tear Me Down, Why Don’t You Love Me Babe Like There’s No One Around is the title of this inaugural Invitational. The exhibition features 12 remarkable artists from Oregon and Washington whose engagement with clay offers a seductive account of the expressive possibilities of the medium: Iván Carmona, Emily Counts, Daniel Duford, Claudia Fitch, Ariana Heinzman, Holly Hudson, Ryan W. Kelly, Dirk Staschke, Chris Theiss, Timea Tihanyi, Tip Toland, and Patti Warashina. Inaugurating the Museum’s new series of thematic exhibitions, the MoNA Ceramic Invitational 2025 offers a window into the contemporary Northwest landscape of ceramic sculpture which, modeled by hand and time, becomes an extension of the artists’ body and mind—with its conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motivations—and the embodiment of the historical moment we live in.

 With the overt invitation in the title to engage with the creative process of making—a practice that often involves experimenting with various methods until, through trial and error, one finds the best fitting to the idea—the MoNA Ceramic Invitational 2025 celebrates a multi-generational group of artists whose artistic practice reveals a profound engagement with the seductive qualities of the ceramic medium.

 Seduced by the physicality of the clay body, the works in the exhibition explore its plastic qualities and often push its limits to investigate the forces at work within culture and society.