A craft cut out for the artist

Return to self-expression

The last part of the exhibition included her latest works created for a project about the mythic geography book Shan Hai Jing (The Classic of Mountains and Seas), for which she had spent two years reading materials and watching documentaries to study the physical structures of animals like lizards.

Although the project was canceled, Liaoliao did not give it up. Instead, she found it a great opportunity to return to self-expression. She aspired to use her art language to represent the aestheticism and spirits of the time, but the key issue she needs to solve is to create signature images, "just like those we see in Chinese animated movie The Legend of the Sealed Book", she said.

In a work called Mountain Spirit II from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, which is an image of a spirit with a snake's body and boy's head, delicate hollowed lines made the body muscular.

"The paper-cutting language is the cutout spaces on flat paper. It's just a two-dimensional sheet. Yet, with the cut-out hollows, you need to convey power, hope, emotions, even pure aesthetics. For example, this mountain spirit. When people look at it, they can feel the twisting motion of a snake because of the cut-out lines," she said.

"It's really challenging. What's easily achieved in painting becomes a puzzle in paper-cutting."

Stopping before the Mountain Spirit I that shows a bird-body human-head spirit, Liaoliao explained that she wanted to use paper-cutting language to represent a divine state like what stone carving can do. With these works, she was approaching her goal.

"What I really want is for every deity from The Classic of Mountains and Seas to have their own distinct presence and state," she said, adding that she will continue working on this series in the following couple of years.

"These are just the beginning."