Liu Xia - The Silent Strength

Venue details

The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies
1161 Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan
Columbia University, Morningside Heights campus
Transit: 1 train to 116 Street/Columbia University

Event details

Photographer Liu Xia is a forbidden artist in her homeland of China, placed under house arrest and allowed little access to the outside world. Her husband, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, has been jailed since 2009 for his support of democratic reform and participation in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. As a consequence, Liu Xia is not allowed to show her work, which was snuck out of China earlier this year for a small showroom exhibit in Paris. 

Now brought to Columbia University in New York, before moving on to Madrid and Prague, the series of 26 pictures, entitled “My Ugly Babies”, is a heartbreaking rendition of a life of solitude and censorship. Childless, cut off from the world, regularly separated from her husband who has spent much of their marriage behind bars, she uses simple dolls as her subjects, skillfully staging them to express her hopes and despair. Their intense, mask-like facial expressions are unsettling, especially in their claustrophobic setting, under stark, contrasted lighting. Sometimes ligatured and gagged, sometimes lovingly embraced by soft, almost pleading hands, the creatures not only speak of her personal struggles but also those of the Chinese people. 

“It is almost a prisoner’s work”, says curator Guy Sorman, French author and personal friend, who convinced her to show the photographs abroad.