Beili Liu: One and Another
On view January 18, 2020-January 3, 2021 at the Crow Museum of Asian Art
The Crow Museum of Asian Art of The University of Texas at Dallas is pleased to present a focused multi-year exhibition series dedicated to making visible the work of emerging and established Texas-based contemporary Asian women artists. The artists presented in this program focus on contemporary issues both in Texas and abroad, giving voice to complex, humanized stories of identity, place, tradition and modernity.
In her first major exhibition in Dallas, Austin-based artist Beili Liu has created two site-responsive installations, Lure/Dallas and Each and Every/Dallas, in two of the Museum’s galleries, that together touch on the theme of human connection. Through her practice, Liu subjects commonplace materials to unorthodox processes, extrapolating complex cultural narratives around the trauma associated with migration and diaspora. This exhibition is the inaugural exhibition of the museum’s Texas Asian Women Artists Series.
Lure/Dallas
The Lure Installation Series borrows from the ancient Chinese legend of The Red Thread, which tells that when children are born, invisible red threads connect them to their soul mates. Over the years of their lives they come closer and eventually find each other, overcoming great social divides or physical distances.
The installation makes use of thousands of hand-coiled disks of red thread, each pierced at the center by a single sewing needle, enabling its suspension from the ceiling. A disk may be connected to another, as a pair; and a pair of disks is made from a single thread. Subtle air currents set the red thread coils swaying and turning slowly as the loose strands of thread on the floor drift and become entangled.
Each composition of the series is designed to carefully respond to the given space and its architectural specificities. Unique compositions of the Lure Series have been previously shown in San Francisco; Los Angeles; Buffalo; Shanghai, China; Fiskars, Finland; Kaunas, Lithuania; Munich, Germany; London, UK; Como, Italy, and Kraków, Poland, among others.
Each and Every/Dallas
Each and Every is a large-scale site-responsive installation and performance project consisting of hundreds of articles of children’s clothing that have been preserved and quieted by industrial cement. Organized to line the gallery floor, yet poised just inches above the ground, the work occupies a rectilinear space that is expansive and penetrates the building’s structure. Though the garments have been transformed by cement, they maintain the drapes, folds, and materiality familiar to fabric. Above the expanse of clothing, hundreds of lines of cement-dipped thread hang in an organic sequence, occupying the vertical space between the floor and ceiling, guiding the viewer’s eyes upwards, offering a sense of hope.
As an artist, mother, and immigrant, the installation and corresponding performance piece was conceptualized in response to the migrant children crisis and the separation of migrant children from their parents at the southern border of the United States. As the title and work suggest, Each and Every calls attention back to the individual experiences of these children and their families, generating space for empathy and understanding.
Each and Every was originally commissioned by MadArt Studio, Seattle.
Beili Liu: One and Another is organized by the Crow Museum of Asian Art and curated by Jacqueline Chao.
Header Image: Beili Liu and Jacqueline Chao in conversation, January 16, 2020. Photo by Turk Studio.
Installation photography by Chad Redmon, Courtesy of the Crow Museum of Asian Art. Artist Interview and installation video produced by Turk Studio, commissioned by the Crow Museum of Asian Art.
