Florence Lanxuan Liu is a visual artist born and based in Shenzhen, China. She holds a BFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA in Printmedia from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work ranges from artists’ books and prints to installations and performances that are highly process and material based.

Artist’s Statement

Through creating objects that play with images of flesh and skin, Florence Lanxuan Liu's work explores a therapeutic process of healing through pain. She believes that suffering is a key condition that furthers psychological transformation and growth. Therefore, juxtapositions between order and chaos, pleasure and pain, freedom and restraint, gentleness and torture as well as bruising and healing are powerful metaphors she deploys. She treats these dualities as essential components that form the foundation of a universal human language. Beginning with her personal journey and her own body as a creative instrument, the work is born out of solitude. Through materiality that attempts to reflect and investigate bodily processes, the work reveals the tenderness and the vulnerability of human beings. Intertwined fibers, innumerable moments of puncturing and sewing, and the act of bruising results in the fragility of the fibers mended into something stronger. The suggestion of shed skin and lost hair are evidence of aging and renewal that becomes a record of transformation. The raw and visceral flesh transfigures into an encounter of haunting beauty. Essentially, all of these objects are self-portraits that capture the state of being as her body travels through phases in life.