CCNY | 2013 Darkroom Residency Recipients

Born and raised in Shanghai, Yijun Liao is a fine art photographer currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Liao’s photographs have been exhibited internationally, including NordArt 2011(Büdelsdorf, Germany), kunst licht Gallery (Shanghai, China), Arario Gallery (New York, NY), Jen Bekman Gallery (New York, NY), VT Artsalon (Taipei, Taiwan), 2008 China Pingyao International Photography Fest (Shanxi Province, China), 2008 China Lianzhou International Photography Fest (Guangdong Province, China). She had solo shows at Adam Shaw Gallery (Memphis, TN) in 2008 and Chinese American Art Council (New York, NY) in 2011.

Liao received the En Foco New Works Award in 2012, and has won spots in Flash Forward - Emerging Photographers 2011 (Magenta, Canada), Photography Now 2009 (Center of Photography at Woodstock), and Hey, Hot Shot (Jen Bekman Gallery) in 2008. Liao was also a Honorable Mention of New York Photo Awards 2009 at New York Photo Festival and a finalist of ITS#10 Photo Award (Trieste, Italy). She is currently completing a studio residency at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and has been a resident artist at Woodstock AIR program in 2010. Liao holds a MFA in photography from University of Memphis.

Experimental Relationship (2007 – Now)

As a woman, I used to think I can only fall in love with someone that I adore, who is maturer than me, older than me, a protector, a mentor. Then I met my boyfriend, Moro, who is 5 years younger than me. I felt the whole relationship is changed all the way around. I become the person who has more authority & power. & when I told my male friend about my new relationship, he said, “How could you choose a boyfriend the way we choose a girlfriend?!” and I think “Damn right. That's exactly what I’m doing, & why not?!” I have always doubted the stereotype of a man-woman relationship. Why should a couple be a man and a woman? Why does man have to be a certain way? Why should woman be a certain way? I feel relationships are far more complicated and always changing, and it has lots of possibilities. So I began to think about the meaning of this relationship and experiment with it.

In this project I throw out questions and ideas about relationship. What will happen if man & woman exchange their roles of sex & roles of power. What this relationship does to man & woman? I also express my frustrations in a relationship, like the impossibility to find a soul-mate, the feeling of isolation & disconnection. Because my boyfriend is Japanese, & I am Chinese. The project sometimes also describes a love & hate relationship. This project is an experiment to me, not a real document of our real relationship.

www.bloodypixy.com

The CCNY Darkroom Residency Program is made possible by generous support from Fujifilm; Kodak; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; and The Jerome Foundation.