Rooftop Convention
— the chronology and studio pathway of Liu Lifen’s artworks

by Guan Yuda, critic/curator, Prof. of Yunnan University, Art School.)

–1–

Being different from those noisy artists who care more about social events, gossip news, fashion and entertainment, historical narrative, or the ranking of “Gods and Goddesses”, Liu Lifen values much more about her own inner live, and her annoyed physical live which goes through thick and thin together and gets entangled with the inner one. When I say like this, there must be someone objects to my point view: does a physical body separated from inner live really exist?

The answer is “Yes”. Since Foucault announced the death of “human”, cultural and spiritual fields have fallen down to a symbol empire and a language bank. Especially in so-called Chinese “contemporary art” market, as these brand promotion and fashion shows are coming and going, never-ending, so that standard duplication, plagiarizing, second-hand rose and copycat are widely adopted. The separation between inner spirit and physical body has become a new normal for mediocre people to deceive themselves. Their physical bodies are all hollow bags and floating over this world of mortals, the inner spirit can find nowhere to dwell either. And this separation now is the extremely serious modern crises.

Liu Lifen’s artistic concern is all about something on the rooftop. As same as those artists who pursuits a true life, “time” is the theme of Lifen’s art, yet she fled from “times/era” but faced to “time”, and “space”, that is rooftop, in which she has always been getting entangled. For me, her works keeps coming out and developing, like a river flow. And no matter how many times transforming of space-time they have gone through, they end up eventually to a flow of life: to seek a balance between inner world and physical life, and furthermore, to expect rebuilding another sort of true, romantic and poetic life in an artistic and aesthetic world through this balance.

Kant once said that time is one-dimensional. Inner instinct appears as time and can hardly be identified by human’s eyes. The concept of time has no apparent form; we can only portray our own time video through different kind of analogies, and several spatial patterns usually help us understand and even master inside operation of time. In my following discussion about Liu Lifen’s artworks, I illustrate the time-based narration as some spatial moving. From the small studio (less than 10m2) in Malmo 2005, to today’s TAI PROJECT gallery in Kunming 2014, during past 9 years, Liu Lifen kept her nomadic migration, as a floating island. She had been resident in seven different studios or spaces including: artist community in east part of Malmo Sweden, shared studio with other 2 artists; a faced to the ocean garret floor of her lodging in a Swedish family; a 2nd floor and top floor studios (shared with Janeric Johansson, a Swedish artist) in Kunming Chuangku Art community; a loft space in Kunming Jinding; a huge hollow studio on top floor of Zurich F+F University, Switzerland; a garret studio in Mariannelund School and a wild forest space in Sweden. Quite interesting is all these studios or spaces are on the roof floor, and therefore, they are regarded as some chronological marks or geographical coordinates. For artists and art creation, the studio or space, after all, are most important spots on where the artworks are created or the art event took place. The artist didn’t migrate on time axis but the experience of time became possible.

So, what I want to do is to establish a chronology system to interpreter Liu Lifen’s artworks by the means of spatial (studio) shifting, transforming and alteration. Studio’s spatial path and the chronology of her works interweaved with each other, and constituted a longitude and latitude grid. Numerous intersect points are present spots where her artworks created and developed. The path is circuitous and bifurcates, like a maze; in fact there is no path. I would rather call it a lonely journey. Let’s start this journey to discover any possible mysteries or secrets.

–2–

During the year 1998-2002, Liu Lifen studied in Traditional Chinese Painting Department, Fine Art of Yunnan Arts Institute. She didn’t spend her last academic year on painting some mountains and waters or flower-and-bird for graduation assignment like most of others in this department, instead, she unexpectedly created more like self-portrait with colored ink on paper. These works obviously influenced by Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine and Picasso’s blue age artworks. Melancholic, lonely, sentimental and a bit decadent, her works at that time were full of pathos at the end of the century. It was easy to find her inner world was introverted and dolorous at that time, and she indulged in that world though. So it is not surprise when she said several years later: “actually I don’t know at all how to paint traditional Chinese painting.”

During the year of 2005 and 2006, Liu Lifen went abroad to study in Hylliepark folkhogskola, Sweden. And in fact, she was already involved in the art exchange program 2001 between Yunnan Arts Institute and Scandinavian countries, and another interactive art concept and performance exchange program “Sugar and Salt” initiated from Malmo by Swedish and Chinese female artists in 2003-2004, which focused on interactive and collaborated works using females body, sugar and salt as materials. These cross-culture vision and international working experience influenced her much more than those academies did. Liu Lifen’s art creation has always been focusing on spiritual field and inner world; it is an inseparable result of her immersion in European contemporary art for years.

Also in the autumn of 2005, Liu Lifen luckily found and set up her first studio in artist community, east part of Malmo city. It was the second floor, the roof floor. Only 10m2 space, she had to share the working space with other 2 artists. The fortunate is Liu Lifen was able to occupy that small space and enjoy her independent working on the floor as other 2 artists were often absent. However, this small studio became impossible for her very soon when the 4 months lease was due. And she had to start using her bed room in her host’s family as her studio. It was a faced to the ocean garret, full of all kinds of her collection: plant specimens, leaves, wild fruits, paper-cutting window decoration, and those “plants” cut from her painting which she was not fond of. The studio was full of everything, like a grocery. This can be a clue that we can trace back why she has been so fond of plant and plant collection and, the plant is always an important factor in her artworks. Her later weaving artworks and painting works always have figures of plant and animal, revealing her unforgettable Yunnan hometown complex and the passion to nature.

Liu Lifen came back to Kunming in 2006 and found a studio in Chuangku Loft art community when that room was just vacant in that winter. She shared this second floor room with Janeric Johansson, a Swedish artist. The room was gloomy and cold, sunshine can rarely reach. Kunming’s artists are all fond of sunshine so much, that there is saying in Kunming, you want to know if artists is working, you firstly look up is there sunshine today.

However, for Liu Lifen, perhaps after such long winter in Scandinavian country, she didn’t need sunshine as intensively as other Kunming artists did. She stayed in her gloomy and cold studio, kept on her paper-based color ink painting. Her works from that period are all melancholy and sensitive, and with the theme of mountain and water landscape and interior scenes and person figure; expressing a lost, floating, silent and lonely mood and visionary images, seemed like the memory and reappearing of Schumann’s piano cycle Kinderszenen, Op.15. During this period, she collected hairs from 40 persons with different gender, age and identity, and created a concept performance work called “Files”; afterward, she extended this work to make paper with these hairs and painted on them, or transformed some of them to canvas mixed materials paints. These works revealed the confusion of romantic love, communicating an ambiguous and anxious physical desire and erotic consciousness. Her art performance work “Tea Time” and video “Water” were also with this consciousness more or less, but the means were more secret and private, seemed like monologues.

From 2006 to 2008, Liu Lifen stayed in Kunming, and this was the most fruitful period for her art creation. She was vigorous and attempted many cross-disciplinary art practices. Her art works from this period were hard to sort out; they were between design, fashion, painting, performance and installation. She utilized different materials such as metal pipe, steel needle, metal hammer, scissors, ramie, paper, the light of a lamp, and clothes. It is interesting that these two groups of materials represented two points on contrary of hard and soft, cold and warm; it seemed like a contradiction and conflict between man and woman, and implied to seek a communication and compromise between them. Her experimental practice from this period also represented a daily poetic temperament, which are romantic and graceful. Even those cold and stiff metal materials reflected a comfortable temperature under the candle light, and, with a very rare sense of humor.

In the spring of 2007, Liu Lifen moved her studio to the rooftop of Chuangku loft art community. She was happy: finally I can use this new space after it’s been vacant for so long. I paved it with new floor board, and I can run in it now. She was busy on different projects in Kunming and Beijing this year. She collaborated with fashion designers Shi Zhijie, Du Qian, BUTTONHOLE, and experimental musician Dan Froberg with “Morning Mist” fashion show. She extended further her previous experimental art practice and focused more on their daily esthetic. From September to November of this year, she involved in “Occasion linking–Songzhuang Village residency project between Beijing and Kunming” curated by Guan Yuda. In the project she exhibited her work of performance and installation “The love letter”. She invited every audience to be a creator to write a love letter to himself or herself, and to her or him. The letter was supposed to put into a special envelop and might be some words, a quiff of hair, a token, a graffiti, a music CD, a lip print, a straw, a leaf, a number, a tag…whatever it is. This work was known as the prayer for love, representing the strength of faith and love. In the meantime, she kept on her paper-based color ink painting. A female figure started appearing in her paint from this period. This female is either in a lonely empty room, or in the wild field, or being hybrid with plant or animal. Different flowers and grass and animal, especially the image of crane and feather began into her painting. These paints always bring a feeling of retuning to Eden Garden and backing to the nature, pretty, warm, but a little bit disconsolate. Conversation, communicating with the nature, and re-identifying the landscape are also evident convention to learn or practice contemporary art in Yunnan.

In 2008, Liu Lifen curated and initiated “Yunnan-Vietnamese female artist in residency exchange program” supported by Kunming Yunart Gallery and Nhasan Studio in Hanoi. Her canvas mixed materials work Tornado– the Useless Door looked like an album of painting or diary writing, which is popular among Chinese scholars. She used this artistic title to nominate her dozens working diary of the years from 2002-2008, which documented every single job and assignment for every day and every month. She was used to draw, erase and manipulate after documenting, so that these graphic diary actually are far more than diary, but a consciousness log of her mental progress. The continuous writing and erasing seemed like the monk’s daily reciting and bell bashing, became a daily artistic practice.

2009 was a fruitful year for Liu Lifen’s art performance. Her journey in this year included Kunming, Lijiang, Xi’an and Prescott of Arizona U.S.A. The interactive performance “Camouflaging” took place June 19-20, in Yuhu Village, at the snow mountain foot, Lijiang, then the work “Incline” performed in the middle of September in Xi’an, and was invited to artist in residency program in Prescott University, Arizona, U.S.A on November and performed the performance work “Taking along”, at the end of this year, she conducted the interactive installation “The love letter” again in “Wonders” art exhibition in Yunnan provincial museum. Her artworks of this year were all about the relation between human and the nature, and the relation and entanglement between female’s body as original source and the land. She attempted to be on intimate with natural land with her own body to express a willing of returning and a resistance to noisy world. Her paper-based colored ink painting at this period personated plant and animal much more than ever before, to reveal an androgynous consciousness of own physical body and life. The painting themselves are much more decorative and graphic.

In May of 2010, LiuLifen curated and organized “Wandering–international artist in residency” program in Kunming, and created a large-scale paint collage “In the room”; from June to August, she collaborated with Nathalie Bissig, a Swiss artist on art performance “Between us” and “Wind sways grass” (video documented by Kris Ariel and Lu Xiaotian); afterward, she created and conducted a performance-video work “Breath” in War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and in October, her installation works “the Cheese series” (with materials: low cabinet, paper-cut, magazines, paper knife and paper folding), and “Hold whose hands” (with materials: crutch, spices, mushrooms, model, rocking chair) were exhibited in TC/G Nordica, Kunming. The quantity and quality of her artworks in this year reached a high level. The performance works “Between us”, “Wind sways grass”, “Breath” and installation work “Hold whose hands” attempted to discuss dilemma of female’s social role and self-identification in the present age, seemed like the roses in firearms, with a sense of realistic pertinence and criticize. The paint collage “In the room” was an important work because of its experimental meaning, and a big breakthrough in her art career, however she hadn’t carried forward any more.

In the summer of this year, Liu Lifen moved her studio to Jinding art community, where her “TAI PROJECT” gallery is now. She was still unwilling to part the one on the roof floor of Chuangku Loft art community. It was, after all, a rooftop studio, and a number of remarkable works created there. She said: I can tell that I gave up a true studio. Now the space in Jinding is an open space although there are 2 rooms here. She was not exactly satisfied with Jinding because what she got here is an open space, although it was bigger. When people can easily come and go, the artist would not be able to keep any secrets, yet the creation is a crucial confidential course for an artist. Liu Lifen’s role changed from a simple artist to a gallery owner when she moved into Jinding community, and she has been doubting and perturbed about this change.

The most interesting works Liu Lifen created during the year of 2011 was a group of unnamed body performance. In these performances, she closed herself into a room full of plant and posed different seduced and teased body gestures for photographing by her friend. This work pulled the questioning of feminist body politics from metaphysic level to a routine living scene. It eliminated mysteriousness of art work and consciously fuzzed the boundary between art and daily life. This work implies a Zen soul of “take a meal when hungry and go to sleep when tired”. It can be listed of the wisest contemporary Chinese female artwork. Unfortunately, it can hardly be found in exhibition or publication. In addition, her painting works with the theme of fairy crane from this period also with some implicative and aesthetic gender metaphors, and respond to those issues which the female art cares about at present.

Liu Lifen then went to Sydney Australia for a ” Two Generations Tour Exhibion –20 years of Chinese contemporary art” curator in residency program. During 2012-2013, she went to Zurich, Switzerland for “Zurich-Kunming exchange artist in residency” program. She “hibernated” in that huge and hollow studio on the rooftop of Zurich F+F University for a half-year-long winter and seldom went out. “I just want to paint and only focus my time on painting. Sometimes I talk to myself. I actually enjoy this loneness in Swiss winter.” She said. She created quite a number of painting works during this period and many of them are amazing great. She tried many different kinds of materials and means such as silk-based acrylic colored ink, paper-based acrylic watercolor, paper-based acrylic, paper-based colored ink, and paper-based watercolor to make her paints looked more unrestrained, more tranquil, more elegant and pure fine, particularly in application of color. The extremely brilliance of the color reached a level of simplicity, beyond any ordinary methods and no one had ever reached. This group of paint works is all with a “water like” nature: moist and smooth, vivid, and intangible, have a spirit of ancient Chinese art. The winding path leads to a secluded nice view, the distinction of Liu Lifen’s painting can be regarded as a personal transformation from tradition in today’s society.

In the summer of 2014, Liu Lifen went to Sweden again for “Visit 14” program initiated by Mariannelund culture center. The forest and wild land in Mariannelund became a part of her studio, in which she had a lot of wild flower arrangement. In the forest and wild land, she set up a land ground installation “Production Machine” with those natural materials gathered from the forest and items from second hand shop. It is a smart and magic work with romantic, poetic and surrealistic spirit. The installation is well kept there till today. The result from it feels like a mysterious fable and is still be awaited. Her painting works from this period care much more about spiritual prospect. They are all light, graceful, tranquil and peaceful.

–3–

As I attempt to sort out the relations between the studio path and the chronology of Liu Lifen’s artworks, an interesting question just comes into my mind: why the migration, nomadism, wandering and return of artist like Liu Lifen bring the arctic Scandinavian area and warm Yunnan together to become a pair of cultural attention and spiritual solicitude? The wild land in the winter is silent, all the more so the sparsely inhabited Scandinavia areas. Silence is a complete life state, a no-word language, a more powerful language, a realm of meditation, and a universe to be discovered. Equally, in ever-warm and sunshine Yunnan, always with blue-sky and beautiful clouds and leisure living, every single plant, such as a tree, a blossom and a slice of grass containing its secret code of life and universe, and waiting for us to discover, to protect and to praise.

Liu Lifen’s art follows the call of her heart and her physical pain. Her artworks are abundant gifts from the life and majestic nature. Like scenery during the journey, they reveal the great power of life and spectacular nature, silently. Lifen’s works are following the call and invitation of this grand rule. In front of the rule of mind and the order of universe, the secret of “hometown” singing voice gradually uncovered, and reminded me of the Nobel Prize winner, Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer’s poem: weary of all who come with words / words but no language / I make my way to the snow-covered island. / The untamed has no words. / The unwritten pages spread out on every side! / I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow. / Language but no words. (From March 1979) Language comes out automatically of where the mind is open and bright. Liu Lifen is such a person who dreams in her waking moment. Driven by dreams, her artworks constructed a local, poetic and spiritual rooftop, and traced the source of mysterious, endless creation over the cloud, and, on the rooftop.

March 1st, 2015
In Kunming

刘丽芬：东方式的梦幻与温情

文：李森

1979年出生于云南省石林县的小女子刘丽芬，她的纸本彩墨画有一种东方式的梦幻与温情。许多人都在尝试用东方水墨画的意境与诗性去创造并融会当代艺术的观念与感受，但很少有人获得闲适、温情的感觉。在一个下雨天读她的画，不禁让人想到雨润梨花，想到一种无声的事物在被观照、被创造时与人的心境发生着的联系。她笔下的事物与意境是让人放松的，它使人重新找到了植根于我们传统艺术中的那种诗性的自由。我们通常在烦躁的尘世中忘记了人与物瞬间的交流，缺乏对那种可靠的存在的具体开显和敞亮的领悟。我们也很少思考我们日常生活中的那种烦躁与欲望的根源，它其实就是存在的缺失和虚妄。

每个人都要面对传统，从理论上说，每个人都是传统中的人。刘丽芬虽然对西方艺术情有所钟，力求实现自己的“当代艺术”角色转化，看来这种转化也是自然而然的。从传统文化因素中发现自己，实现“当代艺术”范式的转化，是许多人的一个梦想，可这是一条凶险之途。正所谓一种思想、一种文化在青春期时往往是伟大的，而在衰老时则往往是残暴的。新的创作要从文化腐殖土中新生，既需要勇气和才情，也需要被文化武装的个人心智重新回归单纯和常识。许多艺人在处理传统文化素材和诗性时，不但没有使艺术创作重新获得清新和纯朴，反而变得更加残暴和装样。当下艺术中的那种滥情的艺术、矫揉造作的所谓民族化、地方化的粗糙文化演绎，即是证明。刘丽芬画面中的世界，几乎是童话中物我交融的世界。在这个世界中，人的负重被稀释，人的精神被纯化，人变成了透明的人。实现物我两忘当然是一种梦想，但使事物和人共同完成一种图式的精神向度，是可能的。艺术在这一点上，可以超越民族和文化传统诗性积淀的定式，将个人的艺术创造推向纯化的简单。这是刘丽芬这个勤劳的小女子尚需努力探索的。

“原始生命力”让“野地”继续蔓延
——“云南、贵州当代艺术现场考察”实验艺术个案

宣宏宇

与和丽斌一样，刘丽芬也是一位充满自然情怀的艺术家，所不同的是，刘丽芬的艺术行动更像是在不断地“出走”，而不是“回家”：对她来说，人与自然的原始关系就是日常生活的延伸，而不是遥不可及的理想。因而我们无法在她的绘画作品中找到那种在现代主义艺术谱系中对“绝对”的追求，倒是很容易看到她怎样用多媒介的艺术实验(包括绘画)模糊了艺术与日常生活的界线。在刘丽芬的作品里，无论是绘画、图片还是影像都一样只是留住记忆的方式，甚至就是思想流动过程中定格了的片断。所以她的作品常常是偶发的，但却不是随意的——这对于那种总是将思想与日常行为对立起来思考的成见来说是不可思议的。正是基于对材料(方式)与情境之间的关系的考究，才让观念得以从作品中平静地流淌出来，它们是语用学的而非语意学的。《携带》即是一件这样的作品：晴空下的郊野，女孩在自然生长的枯草中穿行。这是一场不经意的嬉戏，轻松、欢快，却很难一笑了之。我们的存在大概也是如此，就像那些被带走或未被带走和毛球的命运，以及这个无足轻重的行为本身。

—— 《艺术当代》 2010年第3期

在水中·在云端·在路上 ——刘丽芬的艺术

文：和丽斌

本期介绍的艺术家刘丽芬，是一位跨界的综合型艺术家，除进行绘画性实验外，还涉及装置、行为、影像、设计、活动组织、艺术策展等多样性的艺术实践。“跨界”是近年来文化界颇为流行的词汇，也有越来越多的艺术家进行着跨界的艺术实验，这一趋向是今天文化日益多元、交流日益频繁的结果。但另一方面，在一个还未完整建立艺术生态链的城市，跨界的艺术家也承受了许多常人难以想象的困难与艰辛。

刘丽芬的作品有着浓厚的自然的气息，迥异于时下流行的政治符号、波普、艳俗、卡通等艺术潮流。在云南天高云淡的阳光下，她一点点地打开了自己的心灵，自由地释放着自己的想象。无论是她的绘画作品，还是装置、行为作品，都有着明显的自传性质，在自然、随性的叙述中，流露着淡淡的伤感，她敏感于时空的迁徙、生命的变化，花开花落、四季轮回，流逝的是青春，留下的是无尽的对生命的爱恋。她的绘画作品，在细微的体验与自由的想象中，传递着强烈的梦幻气息，我想，这不仅是云南独特的自然启示了她，她丰富的经历、跨文化的交流和跨界的艺术实践也给予她开阔的视野和自由的表现。她就像一个游走于天地间的精灵，在水中、在云端、在路上，生命无定势，艺术无疆界，在自如的行走中，一切充满期待。

2010年第六期《向上》杂志

刘丽芬：简单与玩乐让艺术与设计自由转合

文：杨文琳

国画专业出生的刘丽芬，利用纸本彩墨的创作方式试图表达她心中的东西方感悟。她的水墨作品有一种“东方式的梦幻与温情”，东方的意境融合当代艺术的观念，两者合一为观者打开了一个诗意而轻松的艺术画面。

曾在瑞典Hyllie park folkhogskola学院进修的刘丽芬，被瑞典的的花木和海洋所深深吸引，来到瑞典学习、生活，实际上是刘丽芬在经历了一系列的工作后的新开始。她说那个时候的自己就像是个完全不懂画，才刚开始学习绘画的孩子，虽然忘记了绘画技法，却每天都在房间里作画，于是就出现了她在2006年创作的《山水》系列作品。在这一系列的纸本彩墨作品中，山体、河流与植物始终出现在画面中，他们穿行、流动，幻化成一个个造型生动的动物，在这里动物就是河流，河流就是动物。“那段时间的自己，每天都很清闲，总喜欢去采集花的标本，在无际的海里游泳”。在瑞典独特的自然与人文环境的启发下，艺术家得到内心的平衡与充实，通过捕捉点点愉悦的瞬间，从而以绘画而诉求内心。

身处瑞典的刘丽芬，被欧洲强烈的设计氛围所感染，也开始了她的设计探索。她特别关注材料的特质，大部分的设计作品都是尝试各种不同材料的结果，其中的“鸟巢灯”备受人们的欢迎。“鸟巢灯”没有华丽的颜色，却可以让每个人的内心都有共鸣，唤起大家心中都有的童年回忆。灯具采用苎麻作为灯具的原材料，经过软化处理后的苎麻可以很自如地根根层叠与相绕。“设计的过程其实就是在玩，我们应该什么都尝试”，刘丽芬就在把玩材料的过程之中，逐渐在自己的手中塑造出形似鸟巢的玩意儿来。“起初没有预想太多，只是希望建立一个以鸟为居民的村落，它们以鸟巢为家，白天出去捕食，晚上回到灯火通明的鸟巢”。呈锥形的鸟巢灯表层有几个圆形的透气孔，方便鸟类出入，同时也具有利于通电后散热的功能。刘丽芬所力图表现出的和谐的鸟类灯具环境，让我们明白“设计与艺术其实可以很简单，在很多时候两者之间的界限并没有那么明晰”。

在艺术与设计之间自由转合的刘丽芬，其正在创作的新作品《无用之门》系列，是关于她在2002年至2008年的工作日记，以玩乐式的拼贴方式，把记录了她每天、每月必须去做的每件事，用夸大了的涂抹使之成为另一图像，但原来的记录仍依稀可见。这个看似随意的创作过程实际是创作者通过自我的梳理，进行自我再认识的创作手段。这个真诚的云南女性艺术家以其独特的女性视角让每个观者感悟艺术、设计创作的真谛。

2009年3月《世界都市 I Look》杂志《世界都市I look》杂志