Liu Yi, born in 1990 in Ningbo, Zhejiang, graduated from the China Academy of Art in 2016 with a master’s degree. She currently lives and works in Hangzhou. Working primarily with ink animation, she integrates video installation, music, and theatrical elements to explore how the language of ink can be transformed within contemporary visual technologies and perceptual structures. Her practice focuses on the subtle and often concealed interactions between individual perception and the surrounding environment, investigating emotional rhythms and psychological states that lie beneath everyday experience—frequently overlooked yet widely shared. Through nonlinear, slow, and repetitive image structures, she dismantles linear narratives and singular subject perspectives, revealing the interwoven relationships among time, memory, and reality.

In recent years, her research has expanded toward non-human life forms and ecological systems. Through sustained investigations into fungi and subterranean ecologies, she reflects on how life continues through symbiosis and collaboration under conditions of uncertainty and disorder, thereby constructing a perceptual space that exists between reality and dream, and between the surface and the underground.

Her video and installation works have been exhibited at major museums and institutions worldwide, including Tate Modern (London), Seoul Museum of Art, Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Ichihara Lakeside Museum (Japan), Messe Basel (Switzerland), Tai Kwun (Hong Kong), the Nieuwe Instituut (the Netherlands), Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Macao Museum of Art, venues in Tallinn (Estonia) and Nicosia (Cyprus), New Chitose Airport (Japan), CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, Hong Kong), Zhejiang Art Museum, and Shanghai Oil Painting & Sculpture Art Museum, among others.

In 2025, Liu Yi was commissioned by the Nieuwe Instituut (the Netherlands) to create the work “Matsutake Lead the Way”. In 2024, she was specially commissioned by the Ichihara Lakeside Museum (Japan) to produce the ink animation short “Nice to Meet You はじめまして”. Also in 2024, When I Fell Asleep, “My Dream comes” received the Best Animated Work Award in the Mini Film Unit of the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival. “The Earthly Men” won the Gold Award of the UOB “Emerging Artist of the Year.” In 2017, following its selection and screening at the Holland Animation Film Festival, “A Crow Has Been Calling for a Whole Day” received the Jury Special Recommendation Award at the Huashidai Global Short Film Festival. In 2018, she was invited by the Seoul Museum of Art to participate in the “SeMA Nanji” artist residency. In 2019, she was invited to an artist residency at the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud in France, served as a jury member of the Cyprus Animation Film Festival, and completed a solo residency exhibition in Cyprus.

Her works are held in the collections of institutions including the ASE Foundation, the White Rabbit Gallery (Australia), the East Asia Library of Stanford University, M+ Museum (Hong Kong), and the Power Station of Art (Shanghai).

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I entered the Affiliated High School of the China Academy of Art and went on to complete both my undergraduate and graduate studies at the China Academy of Art. During those years, many influential contemporary artists came to teach at the academy, and I was continually exposed to new ideas, media, and ways of thinking.

The most important turning point came in my sophomore year, when Professor Yang Fudong assigned us a class project: to draw the storyboard for the film Infernal Affairs. It involved more than 800 frames, all to be completed within just three days. I chose to execute it in ink painting, and the result received high praise. Encouraged by my teacher, I then began experimenting with my first ink animation, Origin of Species, which also became my undergraduate graduation project and received very positive feedback. After that, I went on to create a series of ink animation works, including Chaos Theory, The Earthly Men, and A Travel Inward.

Ink animation is a particularly fascinating medium to me because it allows painting to enter the dimension of time. From there, my practice gradually expanded into animation, video, and installation, with space itself becoming part of the narrative.

So for me, becoming an artist was never the result of a single decision or moment. When observing, expressing, and recording gradually become part of one’s daily rhythm, making art becomes a process that unfolds naturally.

What are the main themes or concepts you explore in your work?

In my practice, I have long been concerned with the hidden and subtle relationship between individual perception and the surrounding environment. I am particularly interested in the emotional rhythms and psychological states that lie beneath everyday experience—those that are often overlooked, yet widely shared. More often than not, these states do not emerge in dramatic form; rather, they seep quietly and gradually into daily life. Through my work, I hope to make this faint yet persistent vibration visible.

I am interested in how time is perceived, rather than how it is recorded. In my work, time often appears as cyclical, overlapping, or even suspended; memory and reality are layered onto one another, while past and present continuously permeate each other.

Another central theme in my practice is non-human life and ecological systems. Through my ongoing research into fungi and subterranean ecologies, I have begun to reflect on how life continues through symbiosis and collaboration under conditions of uncertainty, and even disorder. The underground mycelial network has offered me a new structural imagination: it has no center, yet remains highly interconnected; it is concealed, yet constantly at work.

What inspired you to use Chinese mythology as a framework for your work?

What draws me to Chinese mythology is not its decorative significance as a cultural symbol, but the worldview embedded within it. It does not rigidly separate humans, nature, animals, mountains, rivers, and the cosmos; instead, it places all things within a fluid and mutually permeable network of relations—a way of “touching” the universe through the body and the imagination.

What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?

In the early stages, I usually enter a relatively structured process of reading, research, interviews, scriptwriting, and storyboarding. Once I move into the actual making, however, the rhythm becomes quieter and more personal. Painting and frame-by-frame animation require intense concentration and repetitive labor; in itself, this is a state close to a kind of daily practice or discipline. Many images, sounds, or spatial arrangements are not precisely planned in advance, but gradually emerge during the process of making. I am willing to follow these shifts, because they often lead to more truthful results.

Your practice engages ideas of liberty, inclusivity, and multiplicity. How do these concepts take shape in your work?

What concerns me more is how to leave space for the viewer. For me, freedom first takes shape in form: I try to avoid offering clear conclusions or a single fixed interpretation. I am drawn to open endings, and I like to let the viewer complete the work within silence. That kind of unregulated way of seeing is, in itself, a form of freedom.

As for inclusivity, I believe everyone can find their own place within a work. I pay attention to ordinary people, everyday moments, and subtle emotions. Precisely because these things are not exaggerated, they are often more easily understood by people from different backgrounds. A work does not need to speak on behalf of the viewer; it only needs to leave room for them to enter.

Multiplicity, meanwhile, comes from reality itself. Reality is never singular. A scene can contain both sorrow and humor at once; a conversation can be both genuine and performed. I often blur the boundary between documentation and fiction, allowing different layers of reality to coexist at the same time. Life itself is multiple; I simply try not to reduce it.

I want space, silence, and uncertainty to become part of the work itself. Freedom, inclusivity, and multiplicity often emerge naturally within these gaps.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

One of my current major projects, Matsutake Lead the Way, was created in collaboration with anthropologist Shiho Satsuka. Commissioned by the Nieuwe Instituut in the Netherlands, it is currently on view in the exhibition FUNGI: Anarchist Designers. The project was developed with guidance from Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Feifei Zhou, and scientist Toshimitsu Fukiharu.

The work centers on how matsutake mushrooms shape landscapes. Matsutake cannot be artificially cultivated, yet they form symbiotic relationships with Japanese red pine in disturbed, nutrient-poor soils, helping to drive forest regeneration. From the perspective of matsutake, the history of Japanese forests can be understood as a recurring cycle of disturbance and recovery. Matsutake are not only participants in the ecosystem; they also reveal the complex and fragile symbiotic relationships between humans and non-humans.

The work is currently on view at the Nieuwe Instituut in the Netherlands, and I warmly welcome visitors to see it.

Text and photo courtesy of Liu Yi

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