currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.
Engaging deeply with the histories of design and manufacturing, and drawing from a background in fashion design and traditional East Asian painting, Liu’s practice examines the fragile ways meaning is constructed through material. The objects we touch or see every day—such as rice, clothes-drying racks, or architectural columns—are often taken for granted, yet they are the result of long civilizational processes, repeated iterations, and encounters between cultures. Liu traces their development across past and present, attending to how familiarity is produced through time and material, and how cultural displacement is gradually absorbed, normalized, or rendered invisible in this process.
Through this research, Liu transforms such everyday forms into performative surfaces that unfold intersecting narratives of cultural transmission. His practice is marked by a sense of material romanticism shaped by diaspora and cultural crossing—an ongoing negotiation between the desire to be legible and the impulse to let the surface dissolve.
Education
2022 - until now, Class Willem De Rooij, Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule, Frankfurt, Germany
2017 - 2021, Fashion Design, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Beijing, China
Previous Exhibitions
Well, well, Art Basel Hong Kong with LINSEED
2025
A Mountain Within the City, Hangzhou Museum, Hangzhou China
Four Apertures, Schein Space, Hangzhou, China
Constellations Warsaw, Turnus Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
Nocturnal Animals, LINSEED PROJECT, Shanghai, China
2024
cā biān, Hafenplatz 1-3, Offenbach, Germany
Rundgang Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Temple, Offenbach, Germany
2023
Symposium, Netzwerk Seilerei, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Rundgang Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2021
Skin, Participatory Art, Intimacy Series, Duke Kunshan University Humanities Research Center, China
Performance
Quivering Bloom, Stichting Perdu, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2024
Playing in the Dark: Side B, Uncharted Collective, Busan Biennale 2024
Hairpin Beneath, TROPEZ, Sommerbad Humboldthain, Wiesenstraße 1, 13357 Berlin
The Sound of Defiance, Paludo S. Antonio Bridge Rio Dei Giadini, Venice, Italy
Residency
Jul-Aug 2025Scheinspace, Hangzhou, China
Mar-Apr 2025
Hong Museum, Wenzhou, China
Aug-Nov 2024
HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme
Award
2026Shortlist of art viva 2027
2025
Städelschule Rundgang Award, Hiltner-Wolf-Stiftung
Contact
IG: dididilemma