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Ying Liu

soft sculptures, performance, nature, ceramics, Sound, Audiovisual, Artistic research, Abstract

Ying Liu positions herself as a time killer and dilettante in art, experimenting the aimlessly long-term engagement with materials whilst embracing the uncertainty that comes with daily experiments in forms of installation, performance, video and drawing. Influenced by a Chinese Buddhist family she has developed a strong tendency to decentralize the “self” through minimizing her artist's authority in the art-making. Her practice explores the possibilities of "motional mediation" in the field of everyday life, while suspending her own subjectivity and expression.

Book as ... @ Space of Heech
Book as ... @ Space of Heech - It is an art installation I made in collaboration with Alireza Abbasy in the name of Sarmad Platform for the artist takeover at Limestone books. Publishing has been a core activity in Sarmad since its inception, but throughout the years, we have kept asking ourselves and others like us, why exactly do we produce (so many) publications? What can books, taken in such high regard, contain and do? What are the limitations of conventional knowledge production? As part of our takeover program at @limestone_books_maas , called Space of Heech, we used soon-to-be-recycled books to tile the floor of the bookstore inviting visitors to take off their shoes, walk and sit on the books using the handmade cushions compiled on the window shelf. The installation became the platform on which various public events happened during our takeover program.
Summer program at VierVaart
Summer program at VierVaart "-What are you doing? - Oh! Nothing!" - The program run during the weekends from 13 July to 11 August. Come to Zeeland and camp at the beautiful Viervaart, be surrounded by the heartmelting farming nature, and accompanied by many non-human friends Inspired by notions of nothingness and emptiness, and through installations, workshops, music performance, publications, meditations and hotlines, the program sought ways of artistic production which do not have the expression of the artist's self or her analytical mind at their core. In search of alternative ways of imagining visual arts, we hosted collectively contemplate, bodily engage, meditate, deeply listening and most importantly “do nothing”, as it says in Dutch, “niksen”.
Zine: Shaving a Kiwi
Zine: Shaving a Kiwi - Shaving a Kiwi, is a booklet designed in the form of a collection of postcards. Each postcard carries a poem that serves as a short instruction to be applied for exercising invisible meditation and daily awareness. Through lingering within the sphere of mundane acts of everyday life, I have discovered and archived a series of acts from which 30 are selected for this booklet, ready to be practiced by the readers. This booklet is curated and designed by the Italian collective Corrispondenze for their annual theme “Archive”, and facilitated by Sarmad Platform. Shaving a Kiwi is an interim presentation of the long-term project “Encyclopedia of Motional Meditation Practices: 100 Artistic Methods of Turning Life into a Field of Mindfulness”.
A cleaning lady in Witte Rook #2
A cleaning lady in Witte Rook #2 - Performance, - November 3, 2023 - Witte Rook, StadsGalerij, Breda, The Netherlands Two years ago I did a project about cleaning as a practice in the previous residency building of Witte Rook. This performance is a continuation of that project, but in a different circumstances and social environment which is of an art opening. Since recently I started my side job as a housekeeper (cleaner) in a hotel, I see cleaning from another angle - this bodily activity makes me sweat, pays my bill, and always remains behind the scenes. During the opening, I will bring this activity to the table in the art crowd to let it be visible, and in the meantime, to keep myself physically busy and away from doing potential small talks that I am culturally not good at.
Sadness in Colour Grey
Sadness in Colour Grey - Installation Pencil Ecker Gallery, Breda, the Netherlands Group exhibition “Can You Live My Space?” 3-26, November, 2023
Black Mama - This work is inspired by the work of Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author, artist and ordained Zen priest. The writings in this installation are free translations (into Persian, Chinese and Dutch) of passages from two of her books, “Opening to darkness”, 2023 and “The deepest peace: contemplations from a season of stillness”, 2020. The meditative quality of the act of manual translation into our mother tongues played a crucial role in the development of this work. This work is in collaboration with Alireza Abbasy.
Collective Contemplation #Prospects 2023 - Three Collective Contemplation sessions are held during Prospects 2023. The first session honors the women-led Jina revolution in Iran, best known for the slogan “Woman-Life-Freedom”. The 2nd session is done together with guests from Rainbow Soulclub initiative in Amsterdam. And in the third session, invited artists currently exhibiting work at Prospects joined us.
Collective Contemplation #...ism - One project space, many rooms, twelve artists and two hours of 'motional mediation'. Collective Contemplation is a project by Ying Liu who is interested in silencing the mind by physically and repetitively engaging with a certain materials. Adriaan Luteijn, Alireza Abbasy, Anastasia Shin, Eun Lee, Fatemeh Heydari, Hussel Zhu, Mike Megens, Robert Lombarts, Sam Bachy, Zela Odessa Palmer, Zoë d'Hont are following her path and the result is an exhibition of what the artists have left behind on the spot where the action happened.
Collective Contemplation - Collective contemplation is the program Ying started in June, in collaboration with Sarmad Magazine, with few artists she invited, held via zoom, with few sessions of one hour online meetings, happening every two weeks. During each meeting, artists execute their own “Motional meditation” individually at the same time. The artists will do their individual contemplation in silence; apart from the intro in the beginning and the discussion at the end, there is no verbal communication among the participants. Until now, the first and second round of Collective Contemplation practiced with 13 artists has already finished, and a booklet about this program has been published by Sarmad Magazine.
A cleaning lady in Witte Rook - Performance, installation / April 5-23, 2021 / Witte Rook, Breda, The Netherlands. / Collected the dust in the building of Witte Rook while doing the cleaning practice during the three week residency.
Nonsense Note–Wind Chime - (collaborative work with Larmschutz) Performace 19 min July 2020 --'Wind Chime' is a performance happened in a park in Rotterdam, which is about live composing, immediate interpretation of notes and acoustic improvisation by using a trombone and a guitar. In this sound making process, the composer's subjective self (or "mind") was not engaged in the creativity.
Mental Clouds - dimensions variable Playground, Bospolderplein 16, Rotterdam --Simply touching and shaping could be a meditative movement in which the physicality of the material shapes the hands' gestures and sequentially sculpts a mental object. The being in this situation might recognize its hidden authenticity by taking care of an unshaped piece of clay. Without having a prenotion of what the rough piece of clay in hand could potentially look like, I just grabbed a random amount, having no idea how I was going to shape it. My hands followed the nature structure of each piece of clay and helped them become what they wanted to be. I confess that the creativity and opinions which are supposed to play roles in making them were actually not there with me, I abandoned them as if they could bother the mental pleasure. I asked myself what was there taking a part of making these strange creatures. Is that just my existence which left these traces on the material?
A Must Read Notebook - Ink on notebook 14 x 9.5 x 2 cm -- I alienate languages ​​on my notebook by drawing them quickly with the first impressions or using the unintelligible muscle memory of my mother language. The impressively strange feeling of facing the unknown for the first time was when I was a kid trying to read my father's hand writing which was so abstract and free as hell. The massive undecipherable notes immediately put me in an excluded position to enter a world that was just in front of my eyes. This notebook project started with making fun of a problem I have which is about being unable to do fast writing in a natural and comfortable way when normally writing in Chinese/English. My hand writing shows on paper is always weird and clumsy which now has been used as an advantage since I realized this special skill that is of easily making any written languages ​​unrecognizable. Through writing the language-alike languages, I doubt the meaning and value of any real language in the world.
Living Room for Living - Installation, drawing, scupture Mixed media Dimensions variable Platform LivingRoom, Rotterdam October, 2019 In the Ancient Far East, groups of scholars and intellectuals merged the boundaries between life routines by establishing strong relations towards nature landscape and craftsmanship, nurturing an alliance to objects to create an ideal everyday environment. Backward art has largely played a role in forms of self-cultivation, which is completely different from our contemporary way of understanding and looking at art, that is more (self) reflecting rather than affirming. Nowadays, artworks and designs can have a genuine impact on how we shape our lives. Living around a large bed placed in the center of an apartment surrounded by art works of friends will affect our feelings in an important way. This living room is considered to be an experimental site for Ying Liu to experience the interplay between life and the works she created when “killing time”, during this two-week residency, supporting her to invent an ideal proposal of daily life.
Fluid Stillness - Installation Mixed media Dimensions variable November, 2019 --Each time I grabbed a small certain amount of clay in hands, Knowing so well what I was going to make even without thinking about the process. I was sitting there and making the 'heavy bubbles' for couple hours on each day during the two-week 'Safe Box residency' in Master Institute of Visual Cultures. When the bubbles were getting dried, time happened to appear on the clay showing the different states of colour's changes

Space of Heech

Date:
Location: Limestone Books
In association with: Alireza Abbasy. Sarmad Platform

Limestone Artist Takeover Space of Heech by Sarmad [ ”Heech“ means nothing in Persian ], run by Sarmad platform, happened at Limestone in September 2024.

Through book presentation, workshops, meditation retreat, performance and book installation, we transform Limestone Books into a space of "nothingness" for three weeks.

Nonsense Note at DUMS

Date:
Location: DUMS
In association with: Lärmschutz, Gabrielle Emily Aidulis

Nonsense Note + Lärmschutz + Gabrielle Emily Aidulis
@Het Geluidschap presents
DUMS, Utrecht, NL
23. 10. 2021
30 minutes

https://strangerying.com/Nonsense-Note-performance

Collective Contemplation #Prospects 2023

Date:
Location: Art Rotterdam

Three Collective Contemplation sessions are held during Prospects 2023. The first session honors the women-led Jina revolution in Iran, best known for the slogan “Woman-Life-Freedom”. The 2nd session is done together with guests from Rainbow Soulclub initiative in Amsterdam. And in the third session, invited artists currently exhibiting work at Prospects joined us.

https://theamazingoriental.cargo.site/Prospects-2023

Nonsense Note at Ufestival

Date:
Location: Koffie Luete
In association with: Lärmschutz + Gabrielle Emily Aidulis

Nonsense Note + Lärmschutz + Gabrielle Emily Aidulis

@UFestival
Koffie Luete, Utrecht, NL
13. 11. 2021
30 minutes

Things to consider

Date:
Location: Tilde Amsterdam
In association with: Silvana McNulty, John Bock

group show at Tild Amsterdam, curated by Diego Diez

https://tilde.space/John-Bock-Ying-Liu-Silvana-McNulty

‘Other Ways of Watching Together’ - Group show

Date:
Location: Showroom MAMA

"Where Are We Going?" A video work of mine was presented in the group show-- Other Ways of Watching Together
2018
23min
no sound

https://thisismama.nl/en/events/home-en/other-ways-of-watching-together/

Sarmad Book Five: Home

Date:
Location: Rotterdam
In association with: Sarmad magazine

My project "sadness in color grey" is published in Sarmad Book Five: Home.

Nonsense Note

Date:
Location: Delfshaven

The album 'nonsense note' is a collaboration work which is basically a collection of sound and video made by various musicians from around the globe-- they read my 'Nonsense Note' score and perform in their own ways with different instruments.

http://www.nonsensenote.com

Living Room for Living

Date:
Location: Platform LivingRoom

Nowadays, artworks and designs can have a genuine impact on how we shape our lives. Living around a large bed placed in the center of an apartment surrounded by artworks of friends will affect our feelings in an important way.
This living room was considered to be an experimental site for me to experience the interplay between life and the works I created when “killing time”, during this two-week residency, supporting me to invent an ideal proposal of daily life.

https://platformlivingroom.com/Living-Room-for-Living

Terminal 0 - Gate 2

Date:
Location: St.Joost Master building, 2rd floor, Social space, Den Bosch, NL
In association with: Defne Tesal, Murat Yildiz, Students from Fine art, St. Joost Academy of Art and Design, Bachelor

Gate2
performance(with audience/passerby)/group exercise

CONTENT/RULES:
-No belongings, just come with your body (not naked).
-No interactions with other performers.
-No sleeping.
-Performers are not allowed to leave the place during the performance.
-Only water is provided.

This artist has no awards yet.