Chongyan Liu

Installation

Watch the teaser

Play audio

In this installation, spectators are invited to stand between two facing screens. Their two projections, like two landscape paintings, create an interaction between two states: that of the passage of an aircraft carrier and that of a tsunami. The Liaoning aircraft carrier is home to a group of sailors and operates in an orderly, organised fashion. It represents Chinese military autonomy, but it is also part of the double contradiction I want to explore between the relationship with time and the individual-collective relationship. The tsunami is also another incarnation of a collective force. When an earthquake occurs at the bottom of the sea, the dynamics of the shock wave cause the sea to surge violently, creating an extremely destructive physical wave. By combining the image of the aircraft carrier with that of the tsunami, I wanted to create an installation that represents this conflict between the individual and the collective, between manmade and natural forces, between an efficient autonomous order and an order without autonomy.

Chongyan Liu

Born in Guizhou, China, Chongyan Liu currently lives and works between China and France. After studying oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing from 2013 to 2017, she went on to study at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she obtained the diplôme national supérieur d’arts plastiques (DNSAP) in 2022, in the ateliers of Clément Cogitore and Petrit Halilaj and Alvaro Urbano. She is currently pursuing her artistic career at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains. 

Her work spans a diverse range of media, from documentary and fiction films to the moving image, and also includes installation, painting and sculpture. 

Chongyan Liu’s vision questions current global tensions, influenced by contemporary collective ideologies. Her aim is to create a common ground that transcends the often polarising discourses that divide social classes. In her practice, she weaves an emotional web which highlights socio-political issues rooted in interpersonal narratives. 

Chongyan’s work has been honoured at various international film festivals and exhibitions, including the Berlinale Talents, the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival in Indonesia, IDFA in the Netherlands, the Beijing International Short Film Festival, the Seoul International Pride Film Festival, Videoex in Switzerland and VISIO in Italy. Her forthcoming feature-length documentary, *Niche of the Dragon,*wasselected by the Doc Station lab at the 74th Berlinale Talents.

Production

Partner

Credits