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Liu Xiaodong

Weight of insomnia
With his new series of paintings, Liu uses a machine programmed to capture movement in public spaces and translates this to marks on canvas. The machine has no heart, no desires, no ulterior motive. It does not sleep but obeys its instructions for as long as the artist decides. And yet the results have a strange power to move us. It seems that, despite all efforts, subjectivity can never truly be extinguished. Join Liu as he discusses this latest painting project, the conflict and changes in Chinese society that have influenced his artistic approach and how we might all be affected by the ‘weight of insomnia’.