Each and Every - an old friend and a brilliant artist Beili Liu.Installation and Performance. Childr
Each and Every - an old friend and a brilliant artist Beili Liu.Installation and Performance. Children’s clothing, cement, cotton thread, table, chair, scissors, needle, sound track. MadArt Studio, Seattle, WA.Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations. Working with commonplace materials and elements such as thread, needle, scissors, feather, salt, wax, and cement, Liu manipulates their intrinsic qualities to extrapolate complex cultural narratives. As Kay Whitney wrote about Liu’s work in Sculpture Magazine: “Liu’s installations leap from obsession and repetition to something profound and expansive, merging the personal with the political.”“I make environments that resonate with the experience of migration and cultural memory. My site-responsive installations and performances are rooted in the essence and history of a place and negotiate personal, cultural, and environmental concerns. I explore resilience, healing, and hope through humble materials and accumulated labor. Topics of diaspora, assimilation and the ultimate question of otherness versus belonging are at the core of my work.”“Each and Every is an installation and performance project that speaks to the recent migrant children crisis, in direct response to the Family Separation Policy and the Zero Tolerance Policy implemented by ICE at the Southern border of the United States between 2017 and 2021. Each and Every calls attention back to the individual experiences of these children and their families. As the attention of the media cycles in and out, Each and Every is and solemn reminder that two and a half years later, the fate of many of these detained children is still unknown.Each and Every consists of hundreds of articles of used children’s clothing that have been preserved and quieted by industrial cement. These hardened forms of small garments are poised just inches above the ground, forming a vast expanse on the gallery floor. Above the grey field of clothing, thousands of lines of cement-dipped white cotton thread are suspended from the ceiling, stopping just inches above the clothes. Though the garments have been transformed by cement, they maintain the drapes, folds and tender details of a ruffle, text, or a glimpse of colour. These carefully-sculpted clothing forms embody the very absence of the detained migrant children.”https://www.beililiu.com/Each-and-Every -- source link