3000 rings, 3000 ends and 1500 studs: Bailey Liu's poignant performance

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Imagine a modern cave with open scissors hanging from the ceiling, not bats. And there are one and a half thousand! The blades gleam in the light of the electric bulbs. And right under the scissors of Damocles sits a seamstress and calmly goes about his business. The devices that threaten her life do not disturb the woman. Bailey Liu's sharp art project is that any piece of fabric can be easily sewn into place. This means that even in a world where every now and then you come across sharp edges of scissors, everything is fixable.

If in the first act there are scissors hanging from the ceiling, then, my God, what will happen in the last? The performance by Beili Liu is about beauty, which is fraught with obvious danger. On the threat to life and female fearlessness. Finally, about your favorite business, which gives you the opportunity to escape from thoughts about how scary living in this world is.

A white cloth hangs near the entrance to the room. Each visitor to the performance is invited to cut a piece from the canvas and hand it to the seamstress. The woman will sew the patch to the fabric that looks like a quilt. With every hour of work, the canvas becomes more and more. Now it no longer fits on the table and slides to the floor.

And from above, the needlewoman is still threatened by iron stalactites. By the way, the author of the installation, the Chinese woman Bailey Liu, puts the crown under the sight of the hanging scissors. For the past few years, she has done installations on needle and thread themes. The craftswoman says that the appearance in her arsenal of one and a half thousand scissors is a natural process and unconditional progress.

“I grew up in China, and every family has such traditional scissors,” says the author of the project. In labor lessons, we were all taught to pass this instrument rings forward, so as not to injure a vis-a-vis. According to Bailey Liu, Chinese tradition forbids pointing at someone with sharp scissors, otherwise that person will be in misery.

So, on the one hand, scissors are a tool of evil spirits. On the other hand, it is a completely fearless tool that any housewife has. Bailey Liu's project is based on the play of these meanings, which, perhaps, gets no less pleasure from the process than the public. After all, the craftswoman can observe how the spectators' faces stretch and strain.

“When the audience enters the hall, their first reaction is shock and bewilderment,” the author of the performance shares his observations. - Then there is interest in what is happening, fear arises, which is replaced by sympathy for the seamstress. People begin to walk around the table, look closely at the patchwork "quilt", follow the movements of the needle and even breathe in time with the stitches."