The air in Xinyue Liang’s studio carries a faint scent of earth, and the light scattering across the space seems to glisten with pale blue and white pigments. The studio feels alive, as though one can hear the whispers of the paper fibers and the subtle pulse of the materials. Observing her work, one senses time itself condensed into distinct layers of sediment, each preserving memory with a unique character.

This vibrant sense stems from the sheer variety of her work. Liang explains that her “artistic practice encompasses a diverse range of forms, including drawing, painting, installation, collage, pottery, and calligraphy.” She finds particular appeal in “the combination of new materials and clay, as well as the union of paper-based and porcelain-based media.”

Born in Henan in 1998, Liang’s artistic journey began with calligraphy, a discipline that shaped her foundational understanding of line, form, and rhythm. She formally studied Chinese Calligraphy at Qinghai Normal University before moving to London to pursue an MA in Fine Art: Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts. There, she finally had the freedom to broaden her practice, integrating contemporary materials, installations, and mixed-media methods into her traditional calligraphy foundation.

Transforming Writing into Matter

In her acclaimed Fragility of Mud by Porcelain and Paper Versions series, Liang transformed writing into matter. She used Dai paper from Yunnan, handmade with an 800-year-old technique, tearing it into shreds and blending it with mud to form a fibrous pulp. While still damp, she carved irregular shapes with a bamboo blade, allowing the fibers to stretch and split. Once dried, she inscribed blue and white pigments onto the surface, including fragments of oracle bone script, pictographs, and cuneiform signs.

For me, writing is not about language or representation. It is an act that becomes material. The line, the stroke, the impression – they all exist as traces of memory. I let them fade because the beauty lies in their impermanence.

The surfaces are cracked, textured, and layered, dissolving inscriptions into matter. Liang’s method challenges conventional ideas of continuity and preservation. Tradition survives not in perfect form but in transformation — in the liminal space between sculpture and manuscript, stability and collapse.

Inheritance and Independence

Liang frequently interrogates structures of family and cultural inheritance through both material and metaphor. In Bound Heritage, she bound paper, fabric, and text using linen rope, creating a surface that feels intimate yet restrained, holding something fragile in tension.

The piece reflects invisible hierarchies in Confucian culture and the tension between control and liberation:

Every family carries its own handwriting, a script of silence. Through my work, I explore how the past is inscribed upon the present and how these invisible forces shape identity.

Her piece Separation parallels the shell of a sea urchin with the protective shell of one’s family of origin. The clay’s movement represents an individual breaking away physically and spiritually toward independence. Liang describes this process as “a simple action that condenses the changes of complex family relationships.” Together, Bound Heritage and Separation reveal the quiet struggle between inheritance and self-determination.

Vessels of Thought

While Fragility of Mud showcases dissolution, the Utensils series explores openness, potential, and the subtle power of absence. The vessels, formed from mud and Dai paper, are intentionally irregular, leaving blank areas to invite reflection. They do not hold liquid or food, only air, absence, and possibility.

The empty spaces are as important as the filled areas. They allow the work to breathe and suggest that culture itself must remain open, not fixed.

The principle extends to her flower containers, which confront the prejudiced tendency to compare women to vases, valuing them for appearance alone. These containers appear irregular and unconstrained, holding flowers not as decoration but as symbols of women’s tolerance, vitality, and inner richness.

The vividness of the flowers reflects women’s inner worlds and exuberant spirits. They are not merely objects of beauty but complex, independent beings.

Both series embody the philosophy of absence and presence, fragility and strength, openness and form, uniting tangible material, empty space, and human identity.

Bridging Tradition and Experimentation

A defining aspect of Liang’s work is her ongoing exploration of the intersection between traditional and contemporary forms. She integrates calligraphy into modern art, including collage, installation, and mixed-media:

I aim to break the boundaries between different art disciplines. Through my materials, I discuss cultural inheritance and innovation. How can we preserve the essence of tradition while adapting it to modern society? How do new materials reshape our understanding of old forms?

In works like Branch, acrylic, ink, collage, and quartz sand blend on a single canvas to convey lineage, growth, and cultural memory. – In her pottery series Cultural Expressions in Clay, Liang researched Naxi and Dai techniques to construct vessels embodying both tradition and contemporary interpretations:

Every piece carries a memory of the culture that shaped it. At the same time, I ask what it becomes when placed in a new context.

Tradition as a Living Organism

Liang views tradition as a living, breathing entity rather than a collection of static artifacts. Her works rarely announce their intentions; cracks and imperfections are deliberate, allowing the work to breathe and inviting the passage of time.

Fragility is not weakness. It is a way for history to keep living. Only when we let things crack can memory endure.

Her philosophy prioritizes sustaining essence rather than preserving form, enabling tradition to evolve, breathe, and inspire.

Crossing Borders, Folding Time

Liang’s practice straddles cultures and continents. Studying in China and the United Kingdom allows her to navigate East and West without artificial fusion. Exhibitions in London, Paris, and Milan reveal a material language with international resonance while remaining rooted in Chinese philosophy. Xinyue’s work invites us to inhabit spaces between memory and material, past and present, revealing the subtle poetry of transformation.

To stand before Liang’s work is to feel the persistence of memory.

Each work folds time and geography into itself: porcelain pigments meet London dust, Dai paper converses with contemporary textures, and fragments of ancient scripts dialogue with modern materials. Through experimentation, Liang encourages viewers to consider how translating between materials, cultures, and centuries reshapes our understanding of self and tradition.