Yuqi Liu

破酆都:Calling Her Through the Gates

My practice centers on papermaking, printmaking, and artist books to explore fiber as both image and language. I treat paper not simply as a surface, but as a living material through which memory, labor, and history can be held. By making my own sheets from plant fibers, fungi, and other organic matter, I create works in which material and meaning are inseparable. Shaped by my engagement with the natural world, women’s history, and overlooked vernacular forms of knowledge, my work moves through cycles of life and death, presence and disappearance, fragility and resilience. My projects with mushrooms and mycelium led me to think about interconnectedness, hidden structures, and the importance of looking closely at what grows in the margins. This thinking later expanded into questions of women’s visibility, erasure, and resistance within historical and contemporary Chinese contexts. I am especially drawn to how women’s speech, testimony, and knowledge are censored, fragmented, or lost, and to forms of writing such as Nüshu that carry memory through intimate, fragile, and ritual structures. Through the gesture of making paper, I seek to call back women who have been erased from history and to assert the strength and persistence of their existence.

寂与刃: Between Silence and Sword
Installation, variable size
Kozo pulp painting, kozo bark, screenprint, and embossing on paper

In this installation, I selected four poems by Qiu Jin (1875–1907), a feminist writer and revolutionary of late Qing China, and translated them into Nüshu, a writing system historically used by women in Jiangyong, Hunan. Through pulp painting, the translated texts are embedded into red paper pulp and gradually covered by additional layers until the words become nearly unreadable. The color red carries layered meanings: revolution, feminine strength, ancestry, mourning, and the blood shed in the pursuit of justice. By concealing Qiu Jin’s public, defiant voice within a quiet women’s script, the work reflects on how women’s histories are often obscured, yet continue to survive through silence, material memory, and acts of resistance passed across generations.

寂与刃: Between Silence and Sword
72x48 in
Kozo pulp painting

Poem translation: 
Man Jiang Hong – A Brief Stay in Beijing
A brief stay in Beijing—
And already the Mid-Autumn Festival has returned.
Chrysanthemums bloom in full beneath the garden fence,
The autumn air so clear,
As if the sky itself had just been wiped clean.
Songs have faded all around,
And I, like Han breaking free from Chu,
Have broken from the prison of family life.
For eight long years,
I’ve longed in vain for the tastes and scents of my Zhejiang home.
They try so hard to cast me as a noble lady—
But how deeply I scorn such a role!
Though I was not born a man in body,
My spirit burns fiercer than any warrior’s.
Throughout my life,
My heart has burned with passion—
Not for myself, but always for others.
How could the narrow minds of the worldly crowd ever understand me?
True heroes, when cornered, must suffer hardship and trials.
In this vast and dusty world,
Where can I find a soul who truly knows me?
Tears soak through my robe.

寂与刃: Between Silence and Sword
23x17.5 in
Screenprint, and embossing on paper

Poem translation: 
Song of Encouragement for Women's Rights
We cherish freedom above all,
Let us toast to liberty’s call.
Equal by nature，women and men stand,
Why should we lag behind at hand?
May we rise and break these chains,
Wash away old shame and stains.
If we stand as equals true,
With steadfast hands, the land renew.
Old customs bring disgrace,
Women bound like beasts in place.
But now dawn breaks with wisdom’s light,
Independence claims its rightful height.
May we uproot the chains of old,
Through knowledge and learning, strong and bold.
With duty placed upon our spine,
We’ll stand as leaders, bright and fine.

寂与刃: Between Silence and Sword
216x11 in
Kozo bark

Poem translation: 
Begonia
With tender hands it's planted, blessed by rain and dew the same,
One bloom soft in gentle shades, one bold with crimson flame.
It leans not on the light of spring to earn its fleeting grace—
But dares to bloom, time after time, in autumn’s chill embrace.

Sisters
17x6 in
Waterbase Relief on handmade paper with paper cut 

This book pays tribute to Nüshu, a women-created script from Jiangyong County that offered expression in a society where women were denied formal education. A red Bajiaohua-inspired flower motif references traditional Nüshu writing. Beneath the prints, a hidden papercut message is embedded during papermaking and becomes visible only when backlit, echoing Nüshu’s clandestine communication. The inscription reads: “天下妇女，姊妹一家，生而不息，死而不亡” (“Women of the world, sisters in one family, ever living, never perishing”). Bound in a structure inspired by Sanzhaoshu soft books shared between mothers and daughters, the work honors intergenerational resilience and women’s voices.

Beyond the Eyes
Print: 10x17 in, Portfolio: 12x19x1.5 in
Pure etch on handmade mushroom paper with portfolio

Using a microscope unveils the intricate patterns and textures of mushrooms, revealing a hidden world beyond the human eye. These microscopic images are photo-etched and printed onto handmade paper crafted from a blend of shiitake mushrooms and Kozo fiber. The process of breaking down mushrooms from a growing kit and reforming them into paper mirrors nature‘s cycles of decay and renewal, capturing the unseen beauty and complexity of mushrooms in a tangible, symbolic form.

Beyond the Eyes
Print: 10x17, Portfolio: 12x19x1.5 in
Pure etch on handmade mushroom paper with portfolio

The Web 02
90x48 in
Waterbase Woodcut on handmade paper