Liu Xiaodong has always been fascinated by migration and the phenomenon of people leaving their homes more broadly. This part of the exhibition selects a set of paintings from the suite that Liu made in 2015 when he was invited by Palazzo Strozzi to paint residents of the Chinatown in Prato, Italy, as well as works from the series “Migrations”, which was based on the European refugee crisis. On the other side of the room, Things Aren’t as Bad as They Could Be is a large group portrait of migrants who gathered at Milano Centrale railway station, made by Liu on a subsequent visit to Italy in 2017. A journal the artist kept while creating the “Migrations” series provides insight into his creative inclinations at the time, as well as his thoughts on the subject matter at hand. To quote from the journal entry titled “A Picture of Migrations,” “Migration has always been and will always be an unavoidable fact of humankind from the most distant past through to the future. The wish to find a better place, a more perfect life, is inherently human. Migrations come filled with hope and vitality and burdened by troubles and loss. I think that the problem and anxiety faced by Europe is that it must find a way to both maintain the traditions of its society, while also dealing with the problems that arise with so many peoples of so many cultures living side-by-side. It is similar to my own curiosity and apprehension towards change, when I know something might be good, but at the same time I’m afraid that such a change will assault the ways of my old life. My parents grow old and die, my daughter will grow up and face all sorts of troubles and dangers. I am very anxious. My only choice is to paint them. Paint what I see. But in a society in flux, there isn’t only one single solution, not only one answer to resolve this anxiety.”

In the summer of 2016, Liu Xiaodong’s approach of exploring on foot, and painting what he sees, took him to Chittagong, a major port on the northern shore of the Bay of Bengal. The theme of his new series of paintings would be the landscape of abandoned ships being dismantled on the nearly 20 kilometers of coastline by the port, as well as the living conditions of the ship breakers who work there. The ship breaking industry in Chittagong first emerged in the 1960s, and by the 90s, it had become one of the most important ship breaking sites in the world, thanks to convenient transportation and the availability of labor. It takes only three months for a team of skilled ship breakers to completely dismantle the skeleton of one of the massive ships left stranded on the beach. However, hazardous chemicals are released during the ship breaking process, harming the health of workers. Explosions and falling heavy objects are a common occurrence, threatening the lives of the ship breakers, who lack the necessary protective equipment. While working on this project in Chittagong, Liu Xiaodong experienced challenges he had never faced before: the local government were worried that he would expose the extremely dangerous working conditions, while the shipbreaking yard bosses suspected that Liu and his crew were using his painting process as cover to secretly photograph industry secrets. Both photography and video were prohibited. No documentary about the artist’s work process could be made this time, and even on-site painting became a luxury. To recreate the scenes he had witnessed, after he returned to Beijing Liu had to rely on surreptitiously-taken photographs and his imagination. In diptych paintings from the “Steel” series, realistic images of the ship breakers at work and play are juxtaposed with abstracted paintings of rusty metal plates, allowing viewers to witness the vigorous vitality that can exist even under such harsh conditions.

Liu Xiaodong was stuck in New York for most of 2020. At the beginning of the year Liu was preparing for an exhibition at Dallas Contemporary, and in a small Texan town he completed a collection of work about the US-Mexico border. As the Covid-19 pandemic spread around the world, Liu, who had originally planned to briefly get together with his family in New York, was forced to make an extended stay there. The suspension of flights, the closing of borders, and limiting of activities to only a small space slowed down his pace of life. Liu’s paintbrush, so familiar to him, became of a source of sustenance, allowing him to stay positive and active under the gloom of the pandemic. Besides making a small watercolor each day, Liu also painted over photographs, capturing the city’s lonely streets and adding lively brushstrokes. He would then upload these images onto social media, sharing the urban landscape and the social changes that were occurring with Internet users all around the world. The view from his window, street life, families out for a stroll, and protests: through his footsteps around the city and his vision of it, Liu marked out a unique perspective on New York frame by frame, condensing comedy and drama onto sketch paper and photographs, and recording collective memories of the pandemic in 2020.

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.”

Since the start of his career, Liu Xiadong has been in the habit of using notebooks to reflect on ideas and think through his artworks. This approach became especially pertinent after 2004, when he began to focus on painting on-site. Text began to replace sketches as the most important content in the artist’s notebooks, expressing a wish to capture images through words, and then reproduce these scenes. Liu places the same standards on his text as on his paintings, and he hopes that the words he writes will be able to emit sounds and images, including observations and experiences that cannot be expressed through painting. As the artist has stated, “Painting is not just an image, but the marks left behind by a feeling.” The artist’s diary is also one of these “marks.” Liu wrote around twenty journal entries while working on “Your Friends,” recording the exhibition’s origins and concept, along with the context of the project as a whole. A few lines of poetry and a few sincere and simple sketches are interspersed with the text, threading together the story behind the paintings in “Your Friends.” The diary entries embody Liu Xiaodong’s fresh observations of his friends and family after many years spent mostly apart, as well as recollections of the unforgettable times that they shared in the past. With just a few words, Liu is able to outline the characteristics of the people in his paintings, crafting character sketches that are funny and affectionate. Between the lines, these words help form “Your 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.

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.”

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.