Liao Qian 廖倩
b. 1998 in Guangzhou, China
based in New York, homeland of the Lenape
bio+CV |
Nüwa Project 女娲计划
I’ve been fascinated with a Chinese mythological goddess called 女娲 (Nǚwā). In ancient Chinese folk stories, Nüwa sculpted humans out of mud, blew life into and animated them. When a natural disaster happened, the sky broke and resulted in many people were dying. As the mother of all, Nüwa used a seven-coloured stone (七彩石) to mend the sky and saved her humans. This story is called 女娲补天 (Nüwa mends sky). Nüwa inspired my material curiosity towards clay, especially the healing power of clay. I find Nüwa not only a powerful metaphor for healing but also an artist, someone who creates, transforms and gives life to her art.
In this series of works, I focused on the gift of femininity in my family and aimed to conntect it to the commonality of female lineage through cross-cultural studies. My curiosity towards mother goddesses drew me to self-guided research on revisionist mythology and Jungian archetypal psychology. One commonality I found is that the creator of life from clay story, prevalent in numerous regions and cultures besides Nüwa in China.
Image-making wise, I was playing with ancient Chinese visual culture found through archelogical studies (半坡陶符), magical symbols from Hayao Miyazaki’s movies and the sorcerer, cave art found in 'The Sanctuary' at the Cave of the Trois-Frères, Ariège, France, made around 13,000 BC