Mengqi Liu
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Mengqi Liu is textile-based installation artist who has exhibited in the United Kingdom, China, Germany, and the United States. Recent exhibitions include BaseArt Art Fair in Bensberg, Germany, Shanghai Expo Center, Royal College of Art and Gilston Gallery in London, and AS220 Main Gallery as well as the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. She is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, widely recognized as the finest art school in the world.
The installation portfolio of Mengqi Liu entails found textile draperies which are painted and stitched. She collected these fabrics specifically from an old Beijing fabric center which was neglected due to city planning. As a result, she ties a sense of souced-decay to the fragile casual layout of the textiles in a gallery as an installation. Ranging from florals to streams of abstraction to iconographic symbols (such as portraits) to written texts, the markings on the fabrics represent a kind of personalization. What is the most interesting however is how these textiles are presented. They are laid upon the floor, on pedestals, on furniture, on makeshift structures, and varying degrees of environments as if they were three-dimensional objects or even a objects meant to be discarded. As a result, the presentation leaves a connotation of fragility and temporarily.
Through spraying, splashing and soaking, Mengqi Liu creates her surfaces with newspaper and rice paper which are imprinted with ink and water. Within these tapestries there is a variation between careful patterns and improvisation of the markings. Through three-dimensional layout, these installations are standard-bearers, flags of personal identity, recollections of memory marked on two-dimensional surfaces and presented as temporary fragments which are meant to compliment along with intrude with the space. There is a dichotomy between blending in with the environment and disrupting as well as altering spaces towards the whims of her art. These intimate psychological portraits are realms of fantasy and reality, magical in the dyed presence while at the same time presented as a interactive substance, shaped by space.
Ziru(Free Flow)/自如 (pictured above) depicts a project which reflects the concept of the artist’s impressions of what Italy means to her. This fabric contains patterns of florals and stitched together with ‘stilts’ as a presentation. As a result, the installation could signify a sort of landscape on the natural beauty of Italy but presented in an unusual and unconventional manner. With this streaming sense of elongated pattern on an uneven surface, the installation is not just a dyed fabric, but a configuration, a structure which struggles to sustain upon the apparatus which brings life to this standard.
Improvised and fluxus in nature, at least in the presentation, Mengqi Liu incorporates textiles as a standard-bearer based on imprinted images but applied in a manner of fragile structure. This catalyst of form presents images which are delicate and personalized, a narrative based on personal experiences and interpretations of specific tasked-based subjects. Mengqi Liu brings forth a dynamic interdisciplinary practice to the textile arts with her improvised installation presentation, which is meant to influence her environments.
