In 2021, a monumental ecological sculpture of a lily, exhibited at the 798 Art Zone in Beijing, marked a significant breakthrough for Chinese artist Tingqi Liu. However, this acclaimed work represents merely a fragment of his artistic trajectory. Over the past six years, Liu has demonstrated a bold, uncompromising, and meticulously detailed narrative of bio-art within the Asian and global art scenes, garnering significant critical attention.
“Over the years, the public perception of Liu has been dominated by his unique narrative perspective on non-human organisms and the distinct visual manifestations of his bold crossdisciplinary collaborations. However, these labels have, to some extent, obscured Liu’s intrinsic value and potential as a transdisciplinary bio-artist,” observed independent curator Huiyi Li in her critique for the group exhibition Portraiture at Almine Rech Shanghai in 2020.
Liu’s artistic syntax is governed by a distinct set of rules: experimentation, observation, and metaphorical transposition, all articulated through biological carriers.
Gilles Deleuze, in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, posits that the task of art is not to reproduce the visible, but to “render visible” the invisible forces. Liu began investigating this unique narrative approach as early as 2021. In his seminal work Death, he explored the intersection of art and sonocytology (cell acoustics). Utilizing Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Liu captured the acoustic signature of his own blood cells undergoing thermal death—the “scream” of cellular apoptosis. Transcending mere scientific curiosity, Death transforms a clinical observation into a ritual of self-sacrifice through a visceral blood narrative. The installation forces the audience into an unsettling acoustic field where abstract “death” is reduced to tangible sound waves, and every cell in the body is perceived as a living unit undergoing consumption and termination.
Between 2023 and 2025, Liu turned his gaze toward the lily, surrendering his own sensory agency to the plant to achieve a state of compatibility. He employs the plant’s perspective to construct bold narratives ranging from cannibalism to interspecies sexuality. By capturing the electrophysiological signals generated by lilies in varying environments, Liu investigates emotions and physiological reactions from a botanical viewpoint. He fearlessly expands the boundaries of biological storytelling, attributing traditional concepts of sexual pleasure to the lily for experimental study, thereby completing a closed-loop visual narrative through his installations.
In his 2023 London-based work Symphony of Creation, Liu extends this linguistic logic to investigate the dialectic between the Creator and the Created through the sculpting of apples. In an epoch dominated by Artificial Intelligence, Liu positions the viewer within the Creator’s perspective, posing the ontological question: “You created humans, humans created AI; can AI, in turn, create new entities?” This inquiry into whether the “created” can become the “creator” opens a new dimension of speculative thought.
“I am convinced that my practice will catalyze new dimensions of thought for the public, and I hope to leave a legacy of art that will be cherished by the next era,” Liu stated in an interview. As a highly scrutinized figure in the contemporary art world, Liu continues to dismantle his own creative frameworks. In this turbulent era of cultural collision, Tingqi Liu’s work transcends traditional anthropocentric narrative modes, offering the world a reimagined space of imagination through his unbridled biological perspective.
Words by James Mitchell
Top image: Tingqi Liu, Ethic I, 2021
