RESEARCH- Beili Liu's Installation

Recently, I get to know a Chinese- American artist Beili Liu whose works I am really interested in now especially her installation works. She is good at using different material in space work. 

The installation consists of hundreds of Chinese scissors suspended from the ceiling, pointing downwards. The hovering, massive cloud of scissors alludes to distant fear, looming violence and worrisome uncertainty. The performer sits beneath the countless sharp blades of the scissors, and performs an on-going simple task of mending.

The overwhelming situation presented in The Mending Project is balanced and softened by the silent persistence of a simple mending action. The large quantity and intense force of the scissors elevate the confrontation between the objects and the performer. The installation/performance evokes urgency, concern, and fear, while simultaneously influence viewers through the calming and healing aura of the mending action.

As each visitor enters the space, one is asked to cut off a piece of the white cloth hung near the entrance, and offer the cut section to the performer. She then continuously sews the cut pieces onto the previous ones. The mended fabric grows in size throughout the duration of the performance, and takes over the vast area of the floor beneath the scissors.

Recall is the third project of The House Phase Installation Series.  These site-specific installations are based on the artist's parents’ hand-built adobe home in northern China. The installations take on a simple one-room-house structure, and are built using a wide range of materials, from traditional adobe bricks (see The Little House Stands On the Prairie), to delicate 8-foot-long wax drips.

Recall was made from approximately 600 hand-made Paraffin wax drips. These delicate wax drips measure 5 to 8 feet in length, and shatter easily to a light touch . Suspended in the center of the space, the installation echoes the angle of the rafters and the roof of the barn. Sun light falls through the gaps in the roof, and projects hundreds of light circles, which glide across the space and the house structure throughout the day. The house form speaks of a familiar domestic space, though the fragility of the material calls for uncertainty within the viewer about what a house stands for; shelter, protection and home.

'Taken' is a tangle of wicker suspended from the ceiling. This loose, looping ball of thin wooden reeds contains half circular curls that repeat themselves over and over, forming an airy near-sphere measuring approximately six feet in diameter. The reed (wicker) has been dyed brown (black), and is secured in place with a series of glinting, near-invisible lines of monofilament. “Taken” possesses an organic form, but is not intended to move with the draft generated by a passing observer. It’s a complex, open knot that seems very carefully constructed, with one curve mimicking another, first opening one way, and then the opposite. Despite its airiness the work possesses a sizable heft".

--Adrianna Grant, Visual Art Source

"...made primarily of wool and thread, extols the virtues of the transfixed state. Mystery shrouds the work. It could be made of many a thing: hair, cotton, shredded rubber, etc., and in its presence, one feels at a great loss to know the many stories it could tell. Yet it is the X factor ingredient of acrylic medium that pulls and stretches the wool and thread into an unrecognizable and unworldly realm. Both erotic and ghostly, the hanging strands mark an arrival at such a precise and wonderful choice of materials that you almost give up trying to figure the thing out."