“Time surpasses the spatial partition, the living conditions of different places in urban cities, the state of nature, the social norms and the potential development of societies. No matter it is an impromptu capture of dynamic memories or a theater scene in the memory, all of them turn into a common living theater.”


Liu Yi (b. 1990) graduated from China Academy of Fine Arts (Hangzhou) with Master's degree in 2016 and currently lives in Hangzhou. Liu’s works, ranging from animation, installations to her exploration of space display have been rather experimental. The hand-drawn animation A Crow Has Been Calling for A Whole Day is a work which took close to a year to complete in the form of a travel journal, after Liu Yi returned from the trip to India in 2015. This creative documentary in a combination of live action and animation records her trip in India. In the hand-drawn animations her reflections and thoughts are almost in the dreams, but also a bridge to the reality. The time travel in the work reflects Liu Yi’s love and thoughts about India, the sentiments and everyday conditions, the experience of desire and death.

In this exhibition, Liu Yi presents another regional space time scene with static paintings on the curtains. The flowing images project on the trembling curtains, which harmonize with each other dynamically, and the audience are invited to take a walk through crisscrossing space and time, embedded in the image theater created by the artist, and they become another travel experience of the work.

Drying in the sun was a phenomenon which left a special impression for the artist in India. It somehow embodies ordinary people’s natural living conditions. The work presents a kind of “drying in the sun” in the form of video installation in the exhibition space. This kind of life landscape has not strong regional features; it happens in India even in Shanghai……It may not as magnificent as the Dhobi Ghat Laundry District in Mumbai, but it can happen where there is sunshine and wind. This work has been exhibited in The 3rd Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale (2016) and will be showed in The 20th Holland Animation Film Festival (2017).

The hand-drawn animation installation “Into the Void” is another work by Liu Yi in the exhibition. For us, living in the routine life seems like entering a non-stop spinning machine: There is no way to stop our minds and thoughts from an endless running.

“In the void, nothing can be caught by my memories…I can’t concentrate on anything. I contracted the nebula and compressed it as a fireball. After that, it turned into a ‘point’, and then, back to nothing.”