Of the Grassland with No Boundaries which No Fire Can Burn Down

Lucy XC Liu Solo Exhibition in Jannotta Gallery, Northampton, MA, Apr. 2021

Image-making is an act of resilience. It allows phenomena to surface in society, until they become significant enough to indicate the underlying structures. As an image-maker, I see myself as a preserver of societal phenomena. Through building personal narratives, I capture the development of historical trauma under the effect of current political violence, whitewashing and society’s oblivion. The exhibition Of the Grassland with No Boundaries which No Fire Can Burn Down embeds a steadfast belief in fathoming the murk of societal circumstances through piecing together countless individual testimonies like mine. I do not intentionally warrant any political point of view with my work, yet they do have the effect of eroding on certain ruling societal orders established by authority.

This exhibition consists of five works which utilize a variety of mediums—performance, sculpture, video, photo, and poetry. The immersive photo installation I Gave My Tongue to the Wind and the photo book Of the Grassland with no Boundaries which No Fire Can Burn Down are auto-fictional narratives woven with tangible remains linked to political disasters and trauma; the public artwork Testimonial Loud Speakers is a social experiment in a Beijing suburb that reveals truths through eliciting audience responses; the installation The Other Side and the video Unnamed Poem in Mourning give visual, spatial, and sensorial dimensions to poetic language that reenact experiences.

The works form an imaginary grassland, showing both the futility in taming the beast that roams in the night, and the power of giving shape and form to it with art, capturing glimpses of a tail or a talon.