Liu Yi, A Crow Has Been Calling for a Whole Day, ShanghART Gallery, 2017

As we enter the small exhibition space of M50’s ShanghART Gallery, a barely perceptible flutter catches our eye. At the centre of the dimmed room, the spidery rectilinearity of a series of bamboo poles traces itself against a lone, bluish light. Large, white sheets hang between the bamboo, swaying gently and painted upon them we see the figures of children and women, of feet and of birds. A small projector sits on the floor casting a series of animated ink paintings onto the pale expanse of these ‘bedsheets’. The animation that plays is Liu Yi’s 刘毅 ‘A Crow Has Been Calling for a Whole Day’ and it forms a kind of travelogue, depicting the artist's rural Indian journey of 2016. Painstakingly crafted, Liu Yi weaves together, at the rate of twelve frames per second, hundreds of her voluptuous, vibrant paintings that recreate the children, adults, birds and beasts seen in India. She does so using traditional cel animation techniques... and the effect is mesmerising.

As Liu’s animation dances across the white sheets of her installation, both sets of the artist’s images –the moving animation and the still paintings upon the cotton - merge with and diverge from each other; the dynamism of the animation flirts with the fixity of the ink paintings and, all the while, both ripple with the movement of the thin material upon which they are displayed. The energy of these delicate canvases ensures that they too become a living, breathing part of the exhibition. They beckon the viewer on, inviting us to walk in and out of these living screens as we too begin to embark on a kind of journey. The artist physically transmutes her Indian experience into a kinetic installation which seems to pulsate with its own life-force and becomes a paean to the vibrancy of life itself. The universality of human life is embodied within Liu’s thirteen white sheets, which act as symbols for that which the artist noted on her travels as the common, cross-cultural ritual of hanging linen out to dry. This ritual is “a symbol of the lives of ordinary people all over the world.”

Corporality is a focal point in this exhibition. In the belly dancer sequence within Liu’s animation, the sensuality of the dancer is fed not by the full-bodied depictions of her form, but by the attention that the artist pays to the woman’s eyes and limbs. It is the vermillion-painted nails, the feet and the kohl-lined, catlike eyes of the woman that are the focus. These eyes blink languorously as she twists and turns.

On the sheet hanging next to Liu’s animation is one of her black ink paintings. Broad, sweeping strokes create a pair of rich and fleshy, deliciously bulbous human toes. In other paintings, animals lend their vitality to the dynamism and physicality of the artist’s collection: an animated flock of crows soars across the ‘screen’; cattle are imbued with human emotions; they pair up, they dance wildly, they fall in love. What truly gives life to Liu Yi’s exhibition, however, is the artist’s masterful inclusion of real footage taken during a cross-country train ride. As Liu’s animated cattle lope across a pale expanse, they seamlessly evolve into a herd of real Khillari cows that ran alongside the artist’s rickety train. The camera trails to a mother who props herself up against the side of the carriage, cradling her baby and staring unabashedly into Liu’s lens; youths sit cross-legged on the floor playing cards; families share their evening meal and, seconds later, merge back into Liu’s animated human forms.

Liu originally created ‘A Crow Has Been Calling for a Whole Day’ for the 3rd Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale and it has since exhibited in Shanghai and Singapore. It is a work that reminds us of the splendour of common humanity and reminds us of the joy that may be found in living.

To watch a short clip of Liu's animated work, click the following:

http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/image.htm?id=62752