artist, filmmaker, performance-maker
info
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press
meiliulc@gmail.com
photos by Ohno Ryusuke | courtesy of Tokyo Arts and Space
Homesick for Another World: a film unfolding in space
60min performance
2025
Tokyo Arts and Space | Tokyo, Japan
From Mei Liu’s 2-year artistic research, the work dives in the world of lucid dreaming under oppressive environments exemplified by physical confinements, juxtaposing the access to cosmic, spiritual freedom with the dark socio, bio-political reality.
Documentary footage, oral histories, dreams, speculative fiction, and personal reflection are interweaved to collapse time-space. With both humor and insight, the work asks how collective consciousness and memory might offer alternative imaginaries for solidarity and resistance.
- Recommendations:
- Mei Liu is the one to watch. I admire her keen sensitivity to image and sound, as well as her ability to adapt to her surroundings. Her work is direct, intuitive, and deeply connected to the present.
I believe this performance will capture the imprint of the pandemic across different continents, revealing an inner reality that many will recognize.
— Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Filmmaker / Artist)
“Mei speaks with great honesty and directness, looking straight into my eyes as she recounts the harsh experiences that she and her friends have gone through, as well as the histories connected to them. She carefully narrates how one might concretely overcome these conditions, and how it may be possible to escape from the trauma one carries, transforming these experiences at their root through the use of video and photography.
What emerges through this process is a sense of what ‘freedom’ might fundamentally feel like within the human spirit. If this feeling can be shared among us, then even in our incompleteness, we may still remain in solidarity, and continue living without giving up on life or on expression.
I sincerely hope you will come and experience Mei’s performance and her storytelling.”
— Lieko Shiga (Photographer / Artist)
With 'Homesick for Another World' Mei Liu and Malaz Usta present a deeply moving, poetic and timely performance that takes us on a journey of reflection on the price of freedom and the dream as a possible escape from the pain of displacement. I wish everyone who has never been forced to leave their country could join them on this journey by experiencing this extraordinary piece of art.
— Nan van Houte (theatre manager/curator)
Mei Liu
Writing / Performers
Mei Liu, Malaz Usta
Installation Collaborator
Xinyi Mei
Producer
Mei Liu, Helen Tsang
Support
AFK 3Package Deal
Forecast Mentorship with Lieko Shiga
Amarte Fonds
Master of Film - Netherlands Film Academy
Electric Shadows studio
Advisors
Lieko Shiga
Rabih Mroué
Sister Sylvester
Nduka Mntambo
Billy Mullaney