Ocean, an installation depicting a whale shark and its young, both constructed from steel frames and red denim jeans, is among an eco-preservation trilogy Liang is working on. [Photo by LIU ZHANKUN/FOR CHINA DAILY]
At designer-artist Liang Mingyu’s solo exhibition at Liuzhou Industrial Museum in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, a 10-meter-long installation commands the hall, its striking red covering the entire space in a bloody hue.
Titled Ocean, the installation comprises a gigantic whale shark and its young, both constructed with steel frames and red denim, and draped in many plastic ropes, data cables and textiles. Above them is a hollow sphere made of red plastic trash bags, threatening to enmesh the creatures.
“The bloody red seems to have been drawn directly from the body. The artist drags it and compresses it over and over without any mercy, until it becomes pieces of wrinkled skin,” Zou You, vice-president of the China Fashion Association, writes after viewing the piece.
“Standing before it, I suddenly felt my inner self turned outward. The shame, tremors, and unhealed scars usually hidden beneath the skin are now all laid bare.”
The exhibition, Life Ecology Vitality, runs from July 25 to Oct 25, and showcases the large-scale installation works of Liang Mingyu, a fashion designer, contemporary artist and professor at Southwest University in Chongqing.
She created an installation centered on the diminishing survival space for lions after visiting the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. [Photo by LIU ZHANKUN/FOR CHINA DAILY]
For years, Liang has used her art to address ecological and environmental issues. Her representative installation piece, Maasai Mara, aims to raise awareness about elephants and has been exhibited in international venues, such as the Tate Modern in London.
Ocean is the first piece in an eco-preservation trilogy Liang has been conceptualizing since completing Maasai Mara in 2018, along with the unfinished Earth and Sky.
From China Daily