Artist Statement | Qingran Liu

The Non-returnable One: A Study of Memory Based on Photographic

 

My practice begins with a gaze—into old family photo albums. These frozen images evoke a strange duality: they feel familiar, yet distant. With their vivid colors and clearly defined forms, photographs offer visual clarity but lack narrative explanation. They function as “mediated memories”—fragmented, incomplete, yet persistent. Compared to oral recollections, photographic memories are more immediate, intuitive, and visually precise.

 

I view myself not only as a recipient of these memories, but also as their filter. Each image is interpreted through layers of personal experience, family history, and emotional inheritance. Identity is not static, but constantly reconstructed through the act of remembering—and imagining.

 

The Non-returnable One is a response to people and moments that cannot be returned to. The work Transformation 1 acts like a visual fragment, a puzzle piece pointing to something irretrievable. It reflects the emotional resonance of loss and memory, and the tension between clarity and uncertainty.

 

The textile works in this series are created using a Dubied 10-gauge industrial knitting machine, working exclusively with monofilament yarn—a material known for its stiffness, transparency, and delicacy. I am drawn to its contradictory qualities: strong yet fragile, visible yet evasive. Through knitting, I translate memory into form, embedding these abstract, emotional fragments into the fabric itself.

 

In this process, textile becomes a vessel for personal and collective memory—soft, restrained, and sometimes quietly suffocating. I aim to build a space between reality and imagination, where emotional residue is not only remembered, but materialized.