The Dream that Flocks South《睡去依依随雁断》
Lucy XC Liu Solo Exhibition at Acentric Space, Shanghai, China, Oct. 2021
I am performing inside my immersive sculpture during the exhibition.
I made near 100m2 of handmade paper from the Qing dynasty banned novel The Dream of the Red Chamber. I reference the line “The land is cleansed by snowfall” from this book, covering the floor with large sheets and suspending dreamy constructions from the ceiling. On the exhibition opening, I invited the audience to tread into the work, tearing and soiling it. In the sculpture, I did a Chinese Kunqu Opera performance of the love story The Peony Pavilion, which is an important reference in The Dream of the Red Chamber. The shattered dream of romance in our performance is metaphorical to the destruction of culture.
The young lady Du Liniang drifts into a dream in which she has an affair with Liu Mengmei, a young scholar who approached her with a willow branch in hand.
When Du Liniang wakes and realizes the love affair was all a dream, she is heartbroken, falls ill and dies eventually. The strength of her pursuit for love merits her return from the underworld. Her ghost wanders in the world of the living, to seek the young scholar of her dreams.
Performance Video & Virtual Tour
Lucy XC Liu as Lady Du Liniang, Jesse Jiaxin Wang as the Scholar Liu Mengmei (Select high res in settings for best effect)
Sculptural Details
Welcome to my studio! This is how I made paper for this immersive sculpture.
About the Artist
Lucy XC Liu
I am a multidisciplinary artist and writer. I invent my own artistic mediums—a unique language composed of sculpture, photo, video, poetry, performance, and Chinese music.
I am drawn to the notions of healing on personal and societal levels, of fragility as a state of holding together gracefully and strenuously, of things falling apart as preludes of unity. I explore the multifaceted truths of societal trauma through individual testimonies of hunger and desire which often corrode upon the versions of history that justify power. I often allude to or embody Chinese and Western mythical figures whose audacity and grief have propelled them to transcend not only the constraints of society, but even life and death. My large-scale immersive sculptures and performances are theatrical spaces that envelope viewers and elicit their responses to trigger societal truths; my photo, video, words and sculptural objects create disorienting narratives of corporeal movement through mystic realms.
I had multiple solo and group exhibitions in the US, China, UK, Italy and Greece. I am a recipient of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and the Paris Photo Prize. Reviews of my work are in mainstream media and databases including the Smithsonian Institution, China Daily, and People’s Daily. My publications include an award-winning collection of poetry The Rye of Pondering, and writings archived by top-tier galleries and the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure database.
Within and beyond my role as an artist, l self-identify as a “culture mechanic” mending the ruptures between the past and the present, the east and the west. I am dedicated to global humanities and societal dialogues, constantly engaging with past philosophical writings and progressive contemporary debates. I believe that the magic of art and literature sparks at points of spiritual contact and sutures the crevices within my culture, and between cultures.
I love squirrels. Sending some warm squirrel thoughts to whoever reading this.