2026-02-28 11:30
“Deep Roots — Divergent Landscapes” Participating Artist Exclusive Interview Series
Continuing Zhi Art Museum’s long-standing academic engagement with Eastern aesthetics and natural philosophy, this interview series features in-depth conversations with four participating artists — Cao Shu, Liu Yi, Zhang Wenxin, and Robert Zhao Renhui. The series explores the profound dialogue between individual artistic practices and root-based cultural consciousness, revealing the natural experiments and spiritual wanderings underlying each artist’s creative process.
Artist Liu Yi constructs fluid theaters of time and space through the cross-disciplinary interplay of ink painting, animation, and digital media. Ink traces on xuan paper dissolve and regenerate frame by frame within animation, echoing the fragmentation and reconciliation of individuals under systems of social discipline. From the allegory of microbial reverse evolution in On Evolution to the digestive tract journey in Du Kou, Liu Yi presents multidimensional modes of human perception and existence in the exhibition Deep Roots — Divergent Landscapes at Zhi Art Museum, focusing on the interactions between humans, nature, and society.
Q – Zhi Art Museum
A – Liu Yi
Q: When did you begin engaging with traditional ink painting? Was it something you trained in from childhood?
A: I began learning painting in childhood, like many others, starting with Qi Baishi’s shrimp and copying bird-and-flower compositions. At that time, it was primarily technical training — focusing on structure, brushwork, and ink application — practicing steadiness of hand and precision of vision within an established system of rules.
It was only after entering the Affiliated High School of the China Academy of Art that I began to truly sense the “qi” (vital energy) of ink painting. When I encountered expressive figure painting and landscape painting, I realized that ink painting is not merely about what one depicts, but about what one chooses to “leave” — leaving blank space, leaving breath, leaving sensation.
Later, during university, I often elected courses in the traditional Chinese painting department. The natural environment of the Jiangnan region itself resembles a constantly shifting ink painting — humid, restrained, layered with mist and vapor. That atmosphere is embedded in our daily rhythm of breathing.
Q: How did you come to integrate traditional ink techniques into contemporary digital media? In what way does the materiality of ink become a medium for deconstructing anthropocentric narratives?
A: The diffusion, fluidity, and unpredictability of ink inherently carry temporality. Frame-by-frame animation is itself a process of working with time, so bringing ink into a dynamic structure felt natural.
For me, the materiality of ink is crucial. Its materiality lies in uncertainty: tonal density is shaped by water, air, paper texture, and pressure. It does not obey the tool, nor does it fully obey the artist. Ink moves on its own, overflows boundaries, leaves irreversible traces on paper. This state of disobedience disrupts the desire to position humans at the center of control.
In my work, the human figure is often blurred, unfinished, or even absorbed by the background. This does not diminish human presence, but returns the human to a larger ecological structure. Emotions, wind, water, light, dreams — they carry equal weight, movement, and narrative agency. The uncontrollability and transparency of ink become an ideal vessel for deconstructing anthropocentric storytelling.
Q: Frame-by-frame hand-drawn ink animation must be extremely time-consuming. Why choose this method instead of more efficient digital techniques?
A: Indeed, frame-by-frame ink animation is slow, labor-intensive, and almost ritualistic. This process allows me to enter the temporality of the image through bodily rhythm. Accidental ruptures and unstable movement arise naturally; the image feels eroded by time.
I also use AI and digital tools in my practice. Digital technologies are certainly more efficient and can simulate similar visual effects, but they lack a sense of immersion. Each hand-drawn frame requires brush and paper; one must wait for the ink to dry. Every diffusion of ink is unrepeatable. That process of “not being fully in control” is precisely what I need — like emotion, dreams, and memory, which cannot be generated instantly.
Q: In On Evolution, you use ink painting to interpret evolutionary theory. Is this a response to the intellectual tension between Yan Fu’s translation of “survival of the fittest” and the traditional Chinese concept of “the unity of heaven and humanity”?
A: On one side stands the modern evolutionary logic represented by On Evolution; on the other, the traditional cosmology of “unity of heaven and humanity” and “following natural tendencies.” Fundamentally, these perspectives are in tension: one emphasizes competition and selection, the other harmony and coexistence.
I am not interested in simply judging or reconciling them. In the animation, I place them within the same temporal space, allowing them to resonate. Ink diffuses and divides like cells, evolving even as the image grows and simultaneously collapses. It is biological and philosophical at once.
Q: Du Kou presents the unusual perspective of “like a turtle retracting its head into its own digestive tract.” Is this an act of escape? How did you arrive at using the microcosm of the digestive tract to reflect the macrocosm of modern life?
A: The image of the turtle withdrawing into its digestive tract may appear as retreat, but it is not an escape — it is a descent inward. It is not fleeing reality, but entering the body’s internal reality.
I have long been fascinated by the “interior” world. In today’s society — where information is externalized and accelerated — we are constantly compelled to respond outwardly, to output and perform. Yet the body has its own rhythm: slow, ambiguous, chaotic.
The digestive tract is deeply metaphorical. It is invisible yet undeniably real. It has no language, yet it operates continuously. It is not governed by consciousness, yet determines whether we can truly absorb “reality.”
In Du Kou, I imagine bodily organs as a tunnel of time — swallowing, breaking down, excreting. It becomes a metaphor for modern life: How do we process vast amounts of information? How do we digest emotions, desires, relationships, pressures? Do we truly absorb anything, or are we merely swallowing endlessly?
Through this “personal digestive tract,” I attempt to withdraw from a purely social vantage point and enter a space that is physiological and psychological, enclosed yet open. There is no clear plot or judgment — only bodily rhythm, fragments of dreams, and sensations repeatedly chewed over. It is a visual dissection of how the body carries social experience. There, perhaps, we can re-examine the “undigested gap” between ourselves and the world — a gap left behind by acceleration.
Q: In your view, can art change how people perceive life? How has art influenced your own life?
A: I believe art cannot directly change reality, but it can change how we experience reality. It does not immediately make the world better, but it opens a softer, deeper passage between ourselves and the world — allowing us to notice overlooked details, hear muted voices, and feel unexpressed emotions. Art’s transformation is slow and subtle, but it can take root in the depths of perception.
Q: When you feel down or very busy, what do you do to relax?
A: I need to detach myself into a state without goals. I like to watch the sea.
Q: What films or books have you recently enjoyed or are currently reading?
A: Sol sent me his book Neither Kin Nor Stranger, which I am currently reading.
Related Artists: LIU YI 刘毅
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