Today we’d like to introduce you to Yue Liu.
Yue, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
When I talking about the past, I always feels opaque and a bit fleetingly shameful, as if refocusing on things that have became the past will leaves me behind in time. Especially in an era like today, it is a bit unsettling to think about where I am, where I came from, or where I am going. Wars and violence stemming from all kinds of injustice are making the whole world uncertain. I often feel powerless as an artist.
I’m from a Tibetan Buddhist family; my grandmother is the Hani people, which is an indigenous group of Yunnan Province, China. I established my own Art Project, “Remu”(which refers to the early cave painting in Tibet) in 2022, an organization that mainly focuses on Contemporary art in Tibet. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York, I returned back to China and settled in Lhasa, Tibet, where I began this two-year research project. The main purpose of this art organization is to study the issues of cultural hedging and othering embodied in the field of contemporary Tibetan art from an anthropological perspective.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It is conceivable that academic activities regarding minority groups did not receive a big mainstream welcome in China. During these two years, our activities have been censored several times. The only way to raise funding for more exhibitions of Contemporary Art in Tibet would only be possible with official approvals, and it is not allowed to receive any abroad funding either. Thus, it is very hard for us to consider further development. After I went back to Los Angeles, I wished that postcolonial theory under the Western World context could help me to open up a brand-new possibility to read the complex issues that happened in Southwest China, but ultimately figured out that due to the great geographical and historical differences, many encounters between the West and the East are incommensurable.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Lhamo Yue Liu is an independent artist and curator, she currently lives in Los Angeles, Shanghai and Lhasa. She graduated from School of Visual Arts, New York (2020) and is an MFA Candidate at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (2023). In 2022, Liu co-founded the Remu Art project, which is dedicated to promoting the development of Contemporary Art in Tibet. As a curator, her exhibition include Echoes of Mt. Qomolangma: Unfolding Thoughts in Modern and Contemporary Art in Tibet, Anshan Museum, Suzhou (2022); Echoes of Mt. Qomolangma: Space/Place/Nature, Daqian Contemporary Art Center, Beijing (2022); The Village of the Roundness, Kongshan Museum, Hangzhou. Some main public events she initiated or participated recently include: Tibetan Contemporary Art: Prompt of Nature; Duplication of Divinity; Return of Mother Tongue (西藏当代艺术：自然的驱使、神性的复制，母语的回归）Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing(2021); Impermanence and Inaction(无常无为), Power Station of Art, Shanghai(2023); Ethnography On Borderland: Importing Contemporary Art, Hanshan Museum, Suzhou(2022). Her solo exhibitions include: Tusalava: From Post-Colonial Reproduction to Irreproducible Animism, Kongshan Museum (2021), Hangzhou; Mythical Platform, Plate Space, Beijing (2022); Fake Myth, Museum of the Helan Mountain, Yinchuan (2022); Ghost Narrative: Sorcery as Rebellion, D301 Gallery at California Institute of the Arts (2023). Her article has been published on T magazine China and WSJ China, and her translation work include: Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History, Princeton University Press (2016).
Liu’s researches and art creations focuses on the sources of the definition and contemporary fermentation of the cultural vocabulary of “the other”, which involves the exploration of the culture history, and politics of the ethnic group of the departed, the observation of the spirituality that remains in modern society, and the cultural expressions in the post-colonial era. Liu has conducted excavation and research on contemporary art practice with an interdisciplinary way of thinking, and she has led various forms of cultural projects. As a curator, Liu’s recent direction of art career is mainly in art anthropology, focusing on the expression of ethnicity, cultural bearing, and the boundary in art.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
After fully realizing that others are hell, one can still treat the outside world with sincerity and care.
Contact Info:
- Website: yueliu.art
- Instagram: @thebeatmoon
