Introduction

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).