Encounter: UFO Series No. 1
Medium: monochrome watercolor on paper, hand framed and mounted on wood boards
Dimension: 15 x 22cm each
Year: 2021
Description:
The purpose of exploring alien life is not to solely prove their existence, but also eagerly looking forward to a zero-distance contact with them, even if deep down we are terrified with the fear of the unknown. The contradictory psychology of curiosity and fear indicates mankind’s eternal pursuit of truth. I believe that aliens have visited the Earth and will be in the future, and probably they are among us right now. Therefore they are called Visitors, or the travelers of space-time. And one day we will also become visitors.
Jia LIU (b.1996) graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art, University of the Arts London with a Masters degree of Fine Art in 2021, and achieved a bachelor degree of Visual Arts in Emily Carr University of Art. She predominantly works with oil, watercolors and acrylics to explore the concept of the mystery and the unknown. Through her personal obsessions of the spirituality/transcendentalism, Liu combines different elements of eastern & western occultism and metaphysics, mystical symbols, geometry, UFOs, and self-invented fictional languages (pseudo-language) in her paintings, to discuss the subtle relationships between the material and spiritual world, known and unknown, fiction and reality in the contemporary society. She utilizes abstract languages, surrealism and symbolism to express mankind’s eternal question of the existence of the physical world: is it as real as it seems to be? How can we prove we are not “brains in vats”? The paradoxical co-existences of body and soul, life and death, virtuality and reality motivate humans to dig into the unknown and truth, and their relationships are what Liu is interested in exploring.