UCCA Beijing Open Today, 10:00-19:00 (Final entry: 18:30)
UCCA Dune Open Today, 9:30-18:00 (Final entry: 17:30)
UCCA Edge Closed Today,
UCCA Clay Open Today, 10:00-19:00 (Final entry: 18:30)
Audio Guide
In addition to painting, Liu Xiaodong’s practice has touched upon a variety of different mediums, in which he has created a wealth of powerful artworks. He has long had a strong connection with the world of film, and has been close friends with directors Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Zhang Yuan for many years. He played the lead in Wang Xiaoshuai’s Days, a masterpiece of Chinese independent filmmaking in the 1990s. The recording of Liu’s creative process through documentary filmmaking is also a regular part of his work: Hometown Boy, created by Hou Hsiao-hsien’s production team, won the best documentary award at the 48th Golden Horse Awards, and the “Your Friends” project includes a documentary of the same name. In fact, the manner in which Liu organizes his painting projects has earned him the title of “Painting Director.” Photography is also an indispensible aspect of Liu’s practice: since the 1980s, he has taken photographs to record the lives of the people around him. Some of these images are then directly used as materials for his future paintings, in which we can also often detect a distinctly “photographic” perspective and sense of scene. Liu has held photography exhibitions, published collections of his photography, and in recent years, created artworks by painting over photographs he has taken. Liu also always keeps a diary while working on his projects, recording his state of mind during these moments of creativity. From beyond the frame, the vivid diaries aptly add to the content and connotations of his paintings. In an interview the artist has stated: “People see me as only a painter, but in fact my process for life drawing includes diaries and film. Just like the paintings, these are traces of art. Art is made during limited periods, and during this limited time, everything is art.”
Towards the end of 2020, Liu was finally able to get a flight back to China. Soon after, he travelled to his father’s hometown of Heitukeng, a small village near Jinzhou in Liaoning province. A decade ago, Liu had returned to the nearby town of Jincheng, where he grew up, to create the “Hometown Boy” series. This time, he commenced work on the new project “Your Friends,” for which he painted his long-time friends Ah Cheng, Zhang Yuan, and Wang Xiaoshuai, as well as family members including Yu Hong, his mother, his brother, and his distant relative Yang Hua. Director Yang Bo, who has worked closely with Liu in recent years, documented the project in a 92-minute film. This section showcases watercolors that the artist created as he worked on “Your Friends,” including square monochromatic portraits, and the two notebooks Heitukeng Compositions and Half a Lifetime, which contain studies of his family and his friends, respectively. A selection of additional still lifes and character studies is also included in this section. In the process of creating these watercolors, Liu took pleasure in painting with a narrative sensibility unlike his larger-scale works, revealing a more personal and emotional side of his practice.
In 1993, when Liu Xiaodong met Ah Cheng, the writer had already published The Chess Master (1984), among other novels, and served as scriptwriter for Hibiscus Town (1987), among other films. Despite being ten years apart in age, they quickly became close friends. Since then, Ah Cheng has frequently participated in Liu’s painting projects, including “Great Migration at the Three Gorges” (2003) and “Three Gorges: Newly Displaced Population” (2004), writing the long-form essay Changjiang Jilu on the occasion of the latter’s debut exhibition in Beijing. Ah Cheng photographed and filmed “Domino,” a 2006 exhibition of wall paintings in a Beijing gallery that Liu Xiaodong destroyed at the end of its run. He also served as artistic director for Liu’s “Hotan Project,” and participated in related seminars.
Ah Cheng was the first oil painting completed for the project “Your Friends.” In this work, septuagenarian Ah Cheng stands peacefully in a corner of his Beijing courtyard on an early autumn day in October, his skinny, clean-cut frame contrasted against the verdant but yellowing climbing vines, fallen leaves, and immaculate bamboo branches on the walls. It took Liu Xiaodong almost a week working at Ah Cheng’s house to create the basic structure of the painting. As the artist wrote in his diary, “Painting is the best excuse for us to get together.” This rare chance for them to spend time together not only allowed the pair to reminisce about old times, but also helped shape the direction and structure of this particular creative project: while painting Ah Cheng, Liu decided to narrow his focus to just a few close friends and relatives. Through this more directed approach, he aimed to rethink the possibilities of portraiture, reflecting on how time and emotions are condensed within the medium.
Ah Cheng was the first oil painting completed for the project “Your Friends.” In this work, septuagenarian Ah Cheng stands peacefully in a corner of his Beijing courtyard on an early autumn day in October, his skinny, clean-cut frame contrasted against the verdant but yellowing climbing vines, fallen leaves, and immaculate bamboo branches on the walls. It took Liu Xiaodong almost a week working at Ah Cheng’s house to create the basic structure of the painting. As the artist wrote in his diary, “Painting is the best excuse for us to get together.” This rare chance for them to spend time together not only allowed the pair to reminisce about old times, but also helped shape the direction and structure of this particular creative project: while painting Ah Cheng, Liu decided to narrow his focus to just a few close friends and relatives. Through this more directed approach, he aimed to rethink the possibilities of portraiture, reflecting on how time and emotions are condensed within the medium.
In the early 1980s, Liu Xiaodong and Wang Xiaoshuai were students at the affiliated high school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the paths their lives have followed since then have often intersected. They went through the rebellious phase of their university days together, and naturally began to influence and participate in each other’s creative work. Liu Xiaodong’s first oil painting after graduation, Smoker (1988) featured Wang Xiaoshuai as its protagonist. Wang would continue to appear in Liu’s works, including Tale of Youth (1989), Lost in Thought (1994), and Gambling Outside (1997). Just as Liu Xiaodong wrote in his journal, “Apart from Yu Hong, I have probably painted him the most, since we grew up together.” When Wang Xiaoshuai directed his first film, The Days (1993), he invited Liu Xiaodong and Yu Hong to act as the male and female leads. In 2010, when Wang was in Beichuan, shooting footage for Chinese Portrait (2018) around the site of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Liu was working on the painting Out of Beichuan, the making of which became a short scene in the film. This painting, Xiaoshuai, was created in Beijing in the spring, around the time of Tomb Sweeping Day, when the peach blossoms were in full bloom. In the painting, Wang sits on the terrace of his studio, facing a gigantic brazier. As the warm air from the charcoal fire rises up in the air, it seems as if their memories of filming movies together, all those years ago, are also floating up. These old friends have travelled from adolescence to middle age together, and now their children are approximately the same age as when they first met. A new cycle has begun for them.
Liu Xiaodong has long had close connections with the world of film. When he met Zhang Yuan, the acclaimed director was still just at student in the Department of Cinematography at Beijing Film Academy. With many shared interests, the two quickly became good friends. Liu acted in Zhang’s first short film and served as art director for Zhang's iconic Beijing Bastards (1993). This portrait was made in Zhang’s Beijing apartment, depicting him sitting casually on a sofa, one arm and one foot placed on top of it, his face glowing red. In the foreground is a cup of his favorite drink: coffee mixed with whisky. The straightforward composition and full-bodied brushstrokes bring to life Zhang’s wild, cheerful spirit. In the process of creating this work, Liu was able to carefully observe how the appearance of this old friend of his had changed, allowing him to capture the passage of time and a precise narrative within the painting. As the artist painted, he and Zhang would shoot the breeze about anything and everything. Liu was amused by Zhang’s constant use of the phrase “your friend,” and eventually he decided he would use it for the exhibition title.
Yu Hong, Liu Xiaodong’s wife, is a renowned artist. The couple met at the affiliated high school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and since then Yu Hong has posed for Liu’s paintings countless times. As Liu has commented, through his oil paintings, sketches, ink paintings, and prints, he has painted “every milestone in the life of this being.” Her arms appear in a detail from his high school graduation project Threshing Floor (1983); her profile as a young woman is seen in Yu Hong at College (1985); the couple share an affectionate moment in Embracing Each Other (1991); Seven-Month-Pregnant Yu Hong (1994) displays her swollen belly; and she projects her fierce maternal instincts in Yu Hong and Honghaier (2020). In her own artistic practice, since 1999, Yu Hong has applied her gentle and sensitive gaze to epochal moments of social change and personal transformation in her ongoing painting project “Witness to Growth,” in which a painting based on a photograph from each year of her life is juxtaposed with an image of a news magazine from the same year. In Liu’s eyes, the passage of time has seemingly not left a mark on his wife, as their forty years together have been filled with the fervor of youth and idealism. In this work, painted in Beijing in the spring, Yu Hong stands holding a pair of red scissors underneath a mulberry tree, in front of the brick wall of the couple’s shared studio building. The warm afternoon sun softly envelops Yu Hong's black jacket, leaving a small shadow on the ground. She quietly looks into the distance, as if she will never grow old.
This self-portrait marks the genesis of “Your Friends,” though it was actually first conceived of as part of Liu Xiaodong’s “Uummannaq” project, inspired by a visit to an orphanage in Greenland. Liu crouches naked in a runner’s starting position in the snow of his ancestral village—his concept for the piece asked how long it would take to run from Heitukeng to the North Pole. However, Liu later began to feel the painting did not fit with the theme of the orphanage project, and omitted it from the related exhibition. He continually revised and adjusted the painting at home, and it began to more closely reflect his personal circumstances and state of mind. When discussing the theme of this exhibition with UCCA Director Philip Tinari, Liu suggested using this painting as a starting point. As he humorously explained: “For my first show at UCCA I presented you my hometown, this time I present you my middle-aged body; these are all things that are embarrassing to show. I went really personal the last time I exhibited at UCCA, and it’s very personal this time too: there is the hometown, myself, and my old friends.”
The painting in front of you is a large-scale group portrait of Liu Xiaodong’s friends. From left to right in the main row are Zhang Yuan, Ning Dai, Liu Xiaodong himself, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wu Di, and Yu Hong. Posed slightly in front of them are Wu Di’s daughter and Wang Xiaoshuai’s son. Everyone in the painting stands at a slight distance from each other, allowing viewers to clearly see their appearances. Through this approach, the artist highlights the unique personality and bearing of each person. After Liu completed individual portraits of several friends, he held a get-together on the terrace of Wang Xiaoshuai’s studio, and took the opportunity to create this group portrait. By choosing the lighthearted title of Ning Dai in Person Having a Laugh, the artist hoped to add some humor and warmth to what otherwise might be a serious scene of a standing group. The title also aims to reflect the close friendships that exist between these people. The painting may be seen as a summary of the "Your Friends" project as a whole: the two energetic young people in the foreground and the middle-aged friends behind them compliment each other, forming an intriguing sense of contrast, which seems to suggest the subjects’ aspirations and the beginning of a new life cycle.
It was not a simple task for Liu Xiaodong to paint his mother. In his journal, Liu wrote: “I rarely paint my mother. I painted her once or twice when I was a kid, but I couldn’t paint her well... When painting her it’s easy to end up making her appear too bitter and resentful.” This bitterness might come from her harsh life—to bring up her four children, she worked at the paper mill in Jincheng, and after retirement, she sold popsicles to bring in extra income. She experienced the sorrow of losing a child, and has witnessed the pain caused by the economic transformation of her home. It has been a decade since Liu Xiaodong created the “Hometown Boy” series (2010), and this time his return home was colored less by a general tone of homesickness after nearly a year abroad during a global pandemic, and more by intimate emotions regarding his family. In the process of making this portrait, Liu Xiaodong recalled the dependability and warmth his mother provided him when he was constantly by her side as a child, and came to terms with the part of himself that did not understand her hard work and sacrifice. In the painting, Liu’s mother sits on a stone outside their farmhouse in her late husband’s ancestral village, her face backlit by light reflected from a glass window. It was harvest season in the fall, and mature vegetables and fruits surround her. Perhaps after going through the biting cold and bitter heat of life, the artist’s mother is also entering a more fruitful season.
Yang Hua is a distant relative on Liu Xiaodong’s mother’s side, with the affectionate nickname Huazi. He has worked together with Liu’s elder brother for many years. Huazi is diligent and quick-witted, but also stubborn and selfish, acting like a lone ranger in his small town. In his diary, Liu recorded the difficulties of Huazi’s life, and how he doesn’t like living in the countryside because “There is no one... It’s too boring.” He moved to the comparatively more bustling Jincheng because “It’s a nice place to stroll around and he can drop in on his friends.” Huazi also complained to the artist about the difficulties of finding a wife in a rural area. In this painting, Huazi leans leisurely on a stone pillar that he and Liu’s brother had erected by the Heitukeng courtyard for Liu's makeshift studio, looking ahead as if lost in thought, while the foundation pillars used for making new houses and scattered amidst the wild vegetation nearby appear like ruins. Here, Liu uses full and lively brushstrokes to paint the life of a villager in an unadorned, honest manner, while sharing his thoughts and anxieties about the transformation of his birthplace.
Liu Xiaodong’s return to his hometown gave him a chance to visit the courtyard home his mother and elder brother Xiaochun had recently moved into in Heitukeng, their father’s ancestral village. Liu’s elder brother is three years older than him. Though his brother retired from the Jincheng paper mill a few years ago, he has not rested, filling his time by working odd jobs and restoring the courtyard. Making the painting became an opportunity for Liu to finally get his brother to halt his perpetual motion, and capture him standing steadily in the center of the canvas. Under the early morning light, Liu sketched out Xiaochun’s face, hands, and posture. In the painting, Liu’s brother holds corn in one hand, and a bowl in the other. His tanned skin and wrinkled forehead show the telltale traces of life’s trials, yet fail to hide his satisfaction with life. Over the handful of days that Liu got to spend with his brother, he reminisced about the time Xiaochun accompanied him to faraway Austria for a painting project, and the time they argued over the unexpected pruning of some trees. The artist also laments the white roots sprouting from his brother’s hair underneath black dye, just as his father’s did. Observing his brother's way of life, Liu is often reminded of his parents, full of memories and a sense of intimacy, and dotted by the footnotes of authenticity and sincerity left beneath our changing times.
This group portrait depicts Liu Xiaodong’s brother, mother, distant relative Yang Hua, and their friends, changing a lamp at the family’s courtyard home in Heitukeng. As the final piece completed for the “Your Friends” project, the painting draws to a conclusion the year-long span of time in which the artist was stuck in New York for months, finally returned to Beijing, and then visited his hometown multiple times in order to paint. In the piece, one can observe the entirety of the small, humble farmhouse as seen in early spring, with trees sprouting and flowers budding around it. The sight of his family and friends busying themselves with this unremarkable daily task seems to give the artist a deeply reassuring sense of homecoming. If when Liu Xiaodong returned to Jincheng ten years ago to create “Hometown Boy,” he was observing the changes to his hometown through an investigative mindset, this time his intention was more to quietly observe his home and family. A blade of grass; a tree; a brick; a tile; a family converation: these works are not only about memories and homesickness, but are also pregnant with new possibilities and transformations.
Mixing Media
In addition to painting, Liu Xiaodong’s practice has touched upon a variety of different mediums, in which he has created a wealth of powerful artworks. He has long had a strong connection with the world of film, and has been close friends with directors Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Zhang Yuan for many years. He played the lead in Wang Xiaoshuai’s Days, a masterpiece of Chinese independent filmmaking in the 1990s. The recording of Liu’s creative process through documentary filmmaking is also a regular part of his work: Hometown Boy, created by Hou Hsiao-hsien’s production team, won the best documentary award at the 48th Golden Horse Awards, and the “Your Friends” project includes a documentary of the same name. In fact, the manner in which Liu organizes his painting projects has earned him the title of “Painting Director.” Photography is also an indispensible aspect of Liu’s practice: since the 1980s, he has taken photographs to record the lives of the people around him. Some of these images are then directly used as materials for his future paintings, in which we can also often detect a distinctly “photographic” perspective and sense of scene. Liu has held photography exhibitions, published collections of his photography, and in recent years, created artworks by painting over photographs he has taken. Liu also always keeps a diary while working on his projects, recording his state of mind during these moments of creativity. From beyond the frame, the vivid diaries aptly add to the content and connotations of his paintings. In an interview the artist has stated: “People see me as only a painter, but in fact my process for life drawing includes diaries and film. Just like the paintings, these are traces of art. Art is made during limited periods, and during this limited time, everything is art.”
Watercolors
Towards the end of 2020, Liu was finally able to get a flight back to China. Soon after, he travelled to his father’s hometown of Heitukeng, a small village near Jinzhou in Liaoning province. A decade ago, Liu had returned to the nearby town of Jincheng, where he grew up, to create the “Hometown Boy” series. This time, he commenced work on the new project “Your Friends,” for which he painted his long-time friends Ah Cheng, Zhang Yuan, and Wang Xiaoshuai, as well as family members including Yu Hong, his mother, his brother, and his distant relative Yang Hua. Director Yang Bo, who has worked closely with Liu in recent years, documented the project in a 92-minute film. This section showcases watercolors that the artist created as he worked on “Your Friends,” including square monochromatic portraits, and the two notebooks Heitukeng Compositions and Half a Lifetime, which contain studies of his family and his friends, respectively. A selection of additional still lifes and character studies is also included in this section. In the process of creating these watercolors, Liu took pleasure in painting with a narrative sensibility unlike his larger-scale works, revealing a more personal and emotional side of his practice.
Ah Cheng
In 1993, when Liu Xiaodong met Ah Cheng, the writer had already published The Chess Master (1984), among other novels, and served as scriptwriter for Hibiscus Town (1987), among other films. Despite being ten years apart in age, they quickly became close friends. Since then, Ah Cheng has frequently participated in Liu’s painting projects, including “Great Migration at the Three Gorges” (2003) and “Three Gorges: Newly Displaced Population” (2004), writing the long-form essay Changjiang Jilu on the occasion of the latter’s debut exhibition in Beijing. Ah Cheng photographed and filmed “Domino,” a 2006 exhibition of wall paintings in a Beijing gallery that Liu Xiaodong destroyed at the end of its run. He also served as artistic director for Liu’s “Hotan Project,” and participated in related seminars.
Ah Cheng was the first oil painting completed for the project “Your Friends.” In this work, septuagenarian Ah Cheng stands peacefully in a corner of his Beijing courtyard on an early autumn day in October, his skinny, clean-cut frame contrasted against the verdant but yellowing climbing vines, fallen leaves, and immaculate bamboo branches on the walls. It took Liu Xiaodong almost a week working at Ah Cheng’s house to create the basic structure of the painting. As the artist wrote in his diary, “Painting is the best excuse for us to get together.” This rare chance for them to spend time together not only allowed the pair to reminisce about old times, but also helped shape the direction and structure of this particular creative project: while painting Ah Cheng, Liu decided to narrow his focus to just a few close friends and relatives. Through this more directed approach, he aimed to rethink the possibilities of portraiture, reflecting on how time and emotions are condensed within the medium.
Ah Cheng was the first oil painting completed for the project “Your Friends.” In this work, septuagenarian Ah Cheng stands peacefully in a corner of his Beijing courtyard on an early autumn day in October, his skinny, clean-cut frame contrasted against the verdant but yellowing climbing vines, fallen leaves, and immaculate bamboo branches on the walls. It took Liu Xiaodong almost a week working at Ah Cheng’s house to create the basic structure of the painting. As the artist wrote in his diary, “Painting is the best excuse for us to get together.” This rare chance for them to spend time together not only allowed the pair to reminisce about old times, but also helped shape the direction and structure of this particular creative project: while painting Ah Cheng, Liu decided to narrow his focus to just a few close friends and relatives. Through this more directed approach, he aimed to rethink the possibilities of portraiture, reflecting on how time and emotions are condensed within the medium.
Xiaoshuai
In the early 1980s, Liu Xiaodong and Wang Xiaoshuai were students at the affiliated high school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the paths their lives have followed since then have often intersected. They went through the rebellious phase of their university days together, and naturally began to influence and participate in each other’s creative work. Liu Xiaodong’s first oil painting after graduation, Smoker (1988) featured Wang Xiaoshuai as its protagonist. Wang would continue to appear in Liu’s works, including Tale of Youth (1989), Lost in Thought (1994), and Gambling Outside (1997). Just as Liu Xiaodong wrote in his journal, “Apart from Yu Hong, I have probably painted him the most, since we grew up together.” When Wang Xiaoshuai directed his first film, The Days (1993), he invited Liu Xiaodong and Yu Hong to act as the male and female leads. In 2010, when Wang was in Beichuan, shooting footage for Chinese Portrait (2018) around the site of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Liu was working on the painting Out of Beichuan, the making of which became a short scene in the film. This painting, Xiaoshuai, was created in Beijing in the spring, around the time of Tomb Sweeping Day, when the peach blossoms were in full bloom. In the painting, Wang sits on the terrace of his studio, facing a gigantic brazier. As the warm air from the charcoal fire rises up in the air, it seems as if their memories of filming movies together, all those years ago, are also floating up. These old friends have travelled from adolescence to middle age together, and now their children are approximately the same age as when they first met. A new cycle has begun for them.
Big Yuan
Liu Xiaodong has long had close connections with the world of film. When he met Zhang Yuan, the acclaimed director was still just at student in the Department of Cinematography at Beijing Film Academy. With many shared interests, the two quickly became good friends. Liu acted in Zhang’s first short film and served as art director for Zhang's iconic Beijing Bastards (1993). This portrait was made in Zhang’s Beijing apartment, depicting him sitting casually on a sofa, one arm and one foot placed on top of it, his face glowing red. In the foreground is a cup of his favorite drink: coffee mixed with whisky. The straightforward composition and full-bodied brushstrokes bring to life Zhang’s wild, cheerful spirit. In the process of creating this work, Liu was able to carefully observe how the appearance of this old friend of his had changed, allowing him to capture the passage of time and a precise narrative within the painting. As the artist painted, he and Zhang would shoot the breeze about anything and everything. Liu was amused by Zhang’s constant use of the phrase “your friend,” and eventually he decided he would use it for the exhibition title.
Yu Hong
Yu Hong, Liu Xiaodong’s wife, is a renowned artist. The couple met at the affiliated high school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and since then Yu Hong has posed for Liu’s paintings countless times. As Liu has commented, through his oil paintings, sketches, ink paintings, and prints, he has painted “every milestone in the life of this being.” Her arms appear in a detail from his high school graduation project Threshing Floor (1983); her profile as a young woman is seen in Yu Hong at College (1985); the couple share an affectionate moment in Embracing Each Other (1991); Seven-Month-Pregnant Yu Hong (1994) displays her swollen belly; and she projects her fierce maternal instincts in Yu Hong and Honghaier (2020). In her own artistic practice, since 1999, Yu Hong has applied her gentle and sensitive gaze to epochal moments of social change and personal transformation in her ongoing painting project “Witness to Growth,” in which a painting based on a photograph from each year of her life is juxtaposed with an image of a news magazine from the same year. In Liu’s eyes, the passage of time has seemingly not left a mark on his wife, as their forty years together have been filled with the fervor of youth and idealism. In this work, painted in Beijing in the spring, Yu Hong stands holding a pair of red scissors underneath a mulberry tree, in front of the brick wall of the couple’s shared studio building. The warm afternoon sun softly envelops Yu Hong's black jacket, leaving a small shadow on the ground. She quietly looks into the distance, as if she will never grow old.
Self-Portrait in Heitukeng
This self-portrait marks the genesis of “Your Friends,” though it was actually first conceived of as part of Liu Xiaodong’s “Uummannaq” project, inspired by a visit to an orphanage in Greenland. Liu crouches naked in a runner’s starting position in the snow of his ancestral village—his concept for the piece asked how long it would take to run from Heitukeng to the North Pole. However, Liu later began to feel the painting did not fit with the theme of the orphanage project, and omitted it from the related exhibition. He continually revised and adjusted the painting at home, and it began to more closely reflect his personal circumstances and state of mind. When discussing the theme of this exhibition with UCCA Director Philip Tinari, Liu suggested using this painting as a starting point. As he humorously explained: “For my first show at UCCA I presented you my hometown, this time I present you my middle-aged body; these are all things that are embarrassing to show. I went really personal the last time I exhibited at UCCA, and it’s very personal this time too: there is the hometown, myself, and my old friends.”
Ning Dai in Person Having a Laugh
The painting in front of you is a large-scale group portrait of Liu Xiaodong’s friends. From left to right in the main row are Zhang Yuan, Ning Dai, Liu Xiaodong himself, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wu Di, and Yu Hong. Posed slightly in front of them are Wu Di’s daughter and Wang Xiaoshuai’s son. Everyone in the painting stands at a slight distance from each other, allowing viewers to clearly see their appearances. Through this approach, the artist highlights the unique personality and bearing of each person. After Liu completed individual portraits of several friends, he held a get-together on the terrace of Wang Xiaoshuai’s studio, and took the opportunity to create this group portrait. By choosing the lighthearted title of Ning Dai in Person Having a Laugh, the artist hoped to add some humor and warmth to what otherwise might be a serious scene of a standing group. The title also aims to reflect the close friendships that exist between these people. The painting may be seen as a summary of the "Your Friends" project as a whole: the two energetic young people in the foreground and the middle-aged friends behind them compliment each other, forming an intriguing sense of contrast, which seems to suggest the subjects’ aspirations and the beginning of a new life cycle.
Mom
It was not a simple task for Liu Xiaodong to paint his mother. In his journal, Liu wrote: “I rarely paint my mother. I painted her once or twice when I was a kid, but I couldn’t paint her well... When painting her it’s easy to end up making her appear too bitter and resentful.” This bitterness might come from her harsh life—to bring up her four children, she worked at the paper mill in Jincheng, and after retirement, she sold popsicles to bring in extra income. She experienced the sorrow of losing a child, and has witnessed the pain caused by the economic transformation of her home. It has been a decade since Liu Xiaodong created the “Hometown Boy” series (2010), and this time his return home was colored less by a general tone of homesickness after nearly a year abroad during a global pandemic, and more by intimate emotions regarding his family. In the process of making this portrait, Liu Xiaodong recalled the dependability and warmth his mother provided him when he was constantly by her side as a child, and came to terms with the part of himself that did not understand her hard work and sacrifice. In the painting, Liu’s mother sits on a stone outside their farmhouse in her late husband’s ancestral village, her face backlit by light reflected from a glass window. It was harvest season in the fall, and mature vegetables and fruits surround her. Perhaps after going through the biting cold and bitter heat of life, the artist’s mother is also entering a more fruitful season.
Yang Hua
Yang Hua is a distant relative on Liu Xiaodong’s mother’s side, with the affectionate nickname Huazi. He has worked together with Liu’s elder brother for many years. Huazi is diligent and quick-witted, but also stubborn and selfish, acting like a lone ranger in his small town. In his diary, Liu recorded the difficulties of Huazi’s life, and how he doesn’t like living in the countryside because “There is no one... It’s too boring.” He moved to the comparatively more bustling Jincheng because “It’s a nice place to stroll around and he can drop in on his friends.” Huazi also complained to the artist about the difficulties of finding a wife in a rural area. In this painting, Huazi leans leisurely on a stone pillar that he and Liu’s brother had erected by the Heitukeng courtyard for Liu's makeshift studio, looking ahead as if lost in thought, while the foundation pillars used for making new houses and scattered amidst the wild vegetation nearby appear like ruins. Here, Liu uses full and lively brushstrokes to paint the life of a villager in an unadorned, honest manner, while sharing his thoughts and anxieties about the transformation of his birthplace.
Brother
Liu Xiaodong’s return to his hometown gave him a chance to visit the courtyard home his mother and elder brother Xiaochun had recently moved into in Heitukeng, their father’s ancestral village. Liu’s elder brother is three years older than him. Though his brother retired from the Jincheng paper mill a few years ago, he has not rested, filling his time by working odd jobs and restoring the courtyard. Making the painting became an opportunity for Liu to finally get his brother to halt his perpetual motion, and capture him standing steadily in the center of the canvas. Under the early morning light, Liu sketched out Xiaochun’s face, hands, and posture. In the painting, Liu’s brother holds corn in one hand, and a bowl in the other. His tanned skin and wrinkled forehead show the telltale traces of life’s trials, yet fail to hide his satisfaction with life. Over the handful of days that Liu got to spend with his brother, he reminisced about the time Xiaochun accompanied him to faraway Austria for a painting project, and the time they argued over the unexpected pruning of some trees. The artist also laments the white roots sprouting from his brother’s hair underneath black dye, just as his father’s did. Observing his brother's way of life, Liu is often reminded of his parents, full of memories and a sense of intimacy, and dotted by the footnotes of authenticity and sincerity left beneath our changing times.
Changing a Lamp
This group portrait depicts Liu Xiaodong’s brother, mother, distant relative Yang Hua, and their friends, changing a lamp at the family’s courtyard home in Heitukeng. As the final piece completed for the “Your Friends” project, the painting draws to a conclusion the year-long span of time in which the artist was stuck in New York for months, finally returned to Beijing, and then visited his hometown multiple times in order to paint. In the piece, one can observe the entirety of the small, humble farmhouse as seen in early spring, with trees sprouting and flowers budding around it. The sight of his family and friends busying themselves with this unremarkable daily task seems to give the artist a deeply reassuring sense of homecoming. If when Liu Xiaodong returned to Jincheng ten years ago to create “Hometown Boy,” he was observing the changes to his hometown through an investigative mindset, this time his intention was more to quietly observe his home and family. A blade of grass; a tree; a brick; a tile; a family converation: these works are not only about memories and homesickness, but are also pregnant with new possibilities and transformations.
UCCA Beijing
Open Today, 10:00-19:00 (Final entry: 18:30)
798, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Beijing
Tel: +86 10 5780 0200
Fax: +86 10 5780 0200
UCCA Dune
Open Today, 9:30-18:00 (Final entry: 17:30)
Aranya Gold Coast, Beidaihe
Tel: +86 335 7522 652
UCCA Edge
Closed Today, 10:00-19:00
2F, No. 88 Xizang Bei Lu, Jing'an District, Shanghai
Tel: +86 21 6628 6861
UCCA Clay
Open Today, 10:00-19:00 (Final entry: 18:30)
West Entrance, Creative & Cultural Ceramic Avenue, Dingshu Town, Yixing City, Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province
Tel: +86 0510 8767 9989
