Who is The Bard
Yi Liu
Yi Liu is a Chinese citizen working in the United States.
At the age of 7 she sent a balloon tagged "I want to be a pianist", up to the sky to please her parents who were strict on her piano practice. Her true wish, however, was to become an artist. Her grandma told her, "Artists don't make money until they are dead, like Vincent Van Gogh." What a nightmare.
One of her fondest memories was her father reading the Chinese classical -- Romance of the Three Kingdoms -- to her, before an afternoon nap. The book was not romantic, and she was an undiagnosed dyslexic.
Images were her resort; wrods were a struggle, but writing soothed her. To untangle herself, even through broken sentences, soothed her.
In her early years, a shamanic experience taught her that the highest human life was one that was pristine, devoid of ego and ambition, and one that was close with Nature. Yi Liu held the teaching closely and pushed away her demons. That was when she moved to the demons' den, New York City.
by Donna Elliot
Her ideology and NYC's reality clashed. Underneath her composure, Yi Liu struggled to make sense of it all, until she met an ambitious young man. He struggled significantly and didn't hide it -- new, to Yi. He journaled, talked, and shared with Yi, who, for the first time, was in love. But she feared accepting his dark side.
"When you appreciate a sunset, you don't look away from the clouds. You take it all in. Appreciate him like you appreciate a sunset," Yi Liu's therapist told her. Then, the color in his struggles, her own struggles, and the beauty of New York City seeped through.
The ideology upheld by what was pristine, shattered. What is true, brutality or serenity, is beautiful by its own right. It became the foundational philosophy of Yi Liu's work.
Some time later, Yi Liu met a performing artist and activist in NYC. He always put on a smile. One day Yi asked him to take it off. As the line between his lips flattened, something shone through his eyes — seductive, feminine, and penetrating. The intensity of his beauty enveloped Yi. All along, the warmth that he put on had hidden his true power.
Each time Yi Liu picks up a camera, she is determined to find what is true in a person. Where do they come from? What do they come with? Where have they arrived? Where are they going? Who were there and who weren’t? But underneath it all, what are the songs that carry them along?
Yi Liu's first series, Coworkers, emerged from the community she lived and worked alongside — the fellow instructors at an outdoor educational facility in Idyllwild, California. Each carried a reason that led them there. Through Artists, she trained her camera on a community of retired high-income earners who turned inward and found art in that same mountain town. Each series asked the same question: who is that person when you really look?
Immigrants is Yi Liu's most urgent project yet. In a political climate that reduces those who arrive to a handful of adjectives — criminal, illegal, burdensome — Yi Liu returns to New York City to ask what lies underneath.
Between 2022 and 2024, more than 190,000 asylum seekers arrived in NYC, and one man developed a friendship with Yi Liu. He is now married and settled in the city. Through him, Yi Liu plans to reach deeper into the community, photograph more of the people, and build a body of work that refuses the reduction. Immigrants will not remain what it is today.
Artists will expand. Coworkers will conclude. And Yi Liu will continue to photograph every community she encounters. While it is the community's experience she records, each person's story deserves to be told individually. Beneath the social constructs, the institutional beliefs, and the everyday chatter, everyone shares the same essentials: life, and the flashes of beauty that hide within.
Let Yi Know...
"This is how it always ends.
With death.
But first there was life.
Hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah, blah.
It is all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise.
Silence and sentiment.
Emotion and fear.
The haggard, inconstant, flashes of beauty."
— La Grande Bellezza, Paolo Sorrentino