For Liu Yi, ink is not a medium for leisurely lyricism. Beyond her foundational training in traditional ink painting, she was drawn to its "speed." The fluidity of emotion-laden brushstrokes, under the pressure of time, allows her to convey spirit and weave dreams into frames, crafting layered yet open-ended spatial narratives. Her swift, wet sketches and breath-like blank spaces deliberately invite interventions from installations and digital media... As a leading figure among post-90s ink animation artists, Liu Yi’s creative process now flows with effortless ease. As she puts it in her soft yet resolute voice: "I want to create a nonlinear space—one that cannot be fully articulated or defined."

ShanghART Gallery (West Bund Space) recently presented Liu Yi’s solo exhibition "Diffusion Layer," the first comprehensive showcase of her six major ink animation works from the past decade: from her 2013 debut "On the Origin of Species" to "First Meeting" (2024), commissioned by Japan’s Ichihara Lakeside Museum, and the ongoing long-form piece "Unmanaged Mornings and Evenings" (2019), created during a residency in Cyprus.

It is well known that European painting long adhered to frames and perspective, while classical Chinese landscape painting embraced a radically different composition—transcending the confines of walls, its stillness concealing momentum, an extension of space. Liu Yi is captivated by this boundless fluidity of time and space. Whether on rice paper, silk, lightboxes, or digital screens, her imagery, rendered with masterful ink strokes, achieves an "emotional sketch"—a "gushing translation" of realist states.

Imagine a Jiangnan woman wielding water-like brushstrokes to slice reality, storing sequences of everyday life from marginalized communities in fragmented layers.

Liu Yi, born in 1990 in Ningbo, Zhejiang, graduated from the China Academy of Art in 2016 with a master’s degree. During her studies, she joined artist Yang Fudong’s "Video Lab," exploring multidimensional human existence—particularly marginalized individuals and communities—through a fusion of ink, animation, video installations, and painting.

Since the Tang Dynasty, Chinese landscape painting has embodied "images beyond images," merging time into space to guide both creator and viewer on a mental journey, evoking life’s vicissitudes and offering spiritual solace or catharsis.

Her work bridges tradition and modernity, moving toward a new language. Like meditation, it lets emotions flow freely in emptiness, embracing the inexhaustible and unfillable.

"The loneliness and detachment ink brings—its elusiveness—is not about direct narration but whispers. That sense of alienation isn’t pain; it’s more ethereal." This is precisely what Liu Yi seeks.

Today, her films and installations are exhibited globally at institutions like Tate Modern, Seoul Museum of Art, Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Ichihara Lakeside Museum (Japan), and Art Basel Switzerland. "When I Sleep, Dreams Arrive" won Best Animated Short at the Shanghai International Film Festival, while "Bai Shui Lang" received the UOB Painting of the Year Award (Emerging Artist Category).

In recent years, she has been invited to residencies and commissions across Asia and Europe, with works collected by the White Rabbit Gallery (Australia), Stanford University East Asia Library, M+ Museum (Hong Kong), and more.

How did your artistic journey begin?

At the China Academy of Art’s affiliated high school, I completed foundational art training. In 2009, I entered the academy’s New Media Department. Initially, I didn’t explore animation until studying under Yang Fudong and joining his "Experimental Video Studio," which connected me to video art.

For a class assignment, I had to storyboard "Infernal Affairs" (800+ frames) in days. Instead of standard A4 grids, I used blank sketchbooks and ink. To me, ink’s rapid shifts in form and tonality perfectly simulated light and spatial depth—whether foreground or background.

Which ink painters influenced your animation style?

I’m drawn to expressive, emotional styles like Fu Baoshi’s and Xu Wei’s—subjective, turbulent brushwork capturing life’s struggles. Xu Wei’s fragmented, emotive strokes feel like he’s painting his immediate state—splatters and splashes, soft yet charged with energy.

Growing up in Ningbo, how did your childhood environment shape your visual language?

The sea’s rhythms—its breath, constant change. Floating, ambiguous, uncertain. Sometimes veiled in fog, sometimes glittering with diamond-like light. These images seeped into my work: water, waves. Ningbo’s Xiangshan, with its low, mist-shrouded hills and winding coastal roads, gave me a nonlinear spatial sensibility.

"Bai Shui Lang" recalls Zhou Chen’s Ming Dynasty "Scenes from the Lives of the Poor," which depicted beggars with exaggerated humor. Your focus is on waterfront laborers, especially their haunting expressions.

The "Tanka" people’s gazes are adrift. I stripped facial details, leaving only features—condensed emotions, or "distorted masks." They’re no longer individuals but whispers (and rebellions) against labels like "social scraps." Exaggerated expressions amplify inner turmoil.

Classical ink themes often idealized rural or urban harmony. Your focus differs.

Those themes portrayed stable, ethical worlds. I’m drawn to those outside order—mobile individuals, marginal existences, emotional textures in instability. "Bai Shui Lang" and "First Meeting" ask: "How does one inhabit their body in a weightless social structure?"

Who is the man in "Fire"? Ink usually depicts water; why choose fire?

Fire is inherently uncontrollable—it can’t be shaped or replicated. Collaborating with AI scientist Zhang Rui, I embraced the medium’s unpredictability. The "errors" mirrored fire’s essence, creating a dialogue between ink’s fluidity and digital chaos.

During your residency in Cyprus, you created the animated film Unmanaged Mornings and Evenings. It resembles the work of a journalist or documentary filmmaker, capturing the lives and circumstances of local people.

 I didn’t enter the village of Salamiou as an artist immersing myself in their daily lives. I was an outsider who didn’t understand their language—more like a friend from afar, unassuming and non-intrusive. When I picked up the camera to record, people were less guarded.

The protagonist of the film, Vrionis, is one of the few young people left in the village. Like many remote towns in China, the younger generation leaves to seek work elsewhere, leaving behind the elderly and marginalized groups. Vrionis and his mother care for his intellectually disabled sister day after day. I wasn’t trying to make a grand statement; I simply recorded life as it unfolded: conversations in coffee shops, kneading dough at home. What’s interesting is that only later, after returning home and slowly organizing the footage with the help of a translator, did I learn about the subtle affections that had quietly developed between the man and others in their daily interactions. That delayed realization, blurred by time and distance, carried its own hazy poignancy.

Are you more intrigued by cultural differences or human commonalities?

Commonalities. In Hangzhou, I volunteered with autistic children; their families’ struggles mirrored Cyprus. Often, women bear caregiving burdens, sacrificing careers. "Love" is tangled with "have-to’s." This theme surfaced in Nanjing’s Golden Eagle Art Museum group exhibition.

How do you artistically articulate these "have-to’s"?

Schopenhauer’s "porcupine dilemma"—creatures seeking warmth yet hurting each other with quills—inspired my "Hedgehog Sofa" installation. Love’s tension exists in fleeting moments: "I almost love you" hovers between rationality and emotion.

Is this understanding of love personal?

Not from specific relationships, but from bodily coexistence with emotions—caregiver fatigue, unspoken guilt, elusive closeness, subtle estrangement. These seep slowly, like water, defying language.

"Unmanaged Mornings and Evenings" retains traces of AI collaboration.

Yes, "Digital Ghosts"—unexpected "errors" born from AI’s gaps. Working with AI is like taming a wild horse. Its "thought process" fascinates me; it generates images beyond my intent, filling command voids with its own logic.

Diffusion Layer showcases six major works from the past decade. What emotions does each carry? Looking back, which one was the most challenging to create?

On the Origin of Species was my first attempt at animation—a study of motion trajectories and ink control. It captured that tension between control and chaos, much like emotions themselves. Fire marked my earliest collaboration with AI scientist Zhang Rui, using AI to assist the creative process... only to discover it wasn’t quite so "obedient"!

But later, that very unpredictability—the fluid, uncontrollable texture—became perfectly matched to fire’s essence. After all, fire cannot be molded by anything, nor can it ever be replicated. Every creation is an experiment. The progression isn’t linear; it’s more like a series of "slices." Though these works span ten years, they feel like the same body breathing at different moments—sometimes sharp, sometimes tenderly flowing.

Your works are very likely to trigger dreams.

Dreams are originally a kind of "image structure" stripped of logic. "Falling", "lying flat" and "repeating" are subconscious narrative methods. Ink wash itself is suitable for expressing such flowing and non-linear emotions. Slow, broken, fragmented, and suddenly leaping.

I have a work titled "When I Fall Asleep, Dreams Come". I'm wondering why we dream, if it has some function, or if dreams are a passage into a parallel universe, an experience of another self in that parallel universe...

Can artists control emotional diffusion?

It’s semi-controlled. We may orchestrate visuals and techniques, but true emotional flow eludes command. I build structures where feelings can grow, overlap, and drift naturally.

Do you think the fluid is time, the environment or human survival?

All of them. Our emotions are drifting, and the memories and language we rely on are gradually losing weight.

It is both individual and collective. Sometimes we see a person walking very slowly, as if they were still in the same place, but at the other end they return to the starting point. It seems that I am trying to find a coordinate in this flow.

What is your thought sequence when considering plot, composition, and color? As someone who simultaneously plays the roles of director, screenwriter, and art designer, does your exploration of ink animation feel like a process of deconstruction or an added burden?

First, I determine the style and select the appropriate paper, then move on to the narrative elements. The most time-consuming and demanding part is actually the animation process. Finally comes scanning, animating, and adding music. The volume of frame-by-frame hand-drawn sketches is enormous - dozens of completed drawings might be spread across the floor drying. At this point, I contemplate how ink in its dry state differs from when it's wet. Most ink paintings we see are dry, but the most beautiful state is actually that semi-dry, still-damp quality. I wonder: can I preserve this transitional state? So I capture and scan the images while they're still wet. That's why in the final animation we see ink imagery brimming with moisture - frozen in that precise moment. It carries both the misty atmosphere of dreams and a slightly sorrowful emotional quality, like tears welling up but not yet fallen.

Your soundtracks are remarkable.

Music is another "emotional brush." For "Unmanaged...," Cypriot band Antonis Antoniou used local sitars. "Fire"’s composer Zhang Xin and sound engineer Li Lefu experimented with marbles in plates to mimic nature.

How has your working methodology evolved over the past decade?

With each new work, I've taken a step forward. The Mushroom at the End of the World is a field study and philosophical exploration of the rare matsutake mushroom by anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. This book has profoundly influenced many artists, particularly those working with mushroom-related themes. Having seen my previous works, the organizers commissioned me to create an animated short.

This marked my first collaboration with anthropologists and scientists—an entirely fresh experience for me. As artists, we often risk becoming trapped in our own solipsistic narratives, but this partnership provided a solid theoretical foundation that grounded my work in rigorous research. The piece will be exhibited this November in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

French critic Taine wrote that artists must "fill their minds with contemporary thoughts and feelings." What are yours?

"The helplessness in data inflation"—the disorientation of global mobility and transitional eras. My work doesn’t solve problems but creates spaces to feel them.

Current reading preferences?

Mythological sci-fi like Ted Chiang’s "Story of Your Life" ("Arrival")—fictional yet eerily real.

What was the most important lesson you learned from Teacher Yang Fudong during your student days?

He has always advocated "independent thinking, nothing new can be established without breaking through."