ARTISTS
Mei Liu
photo by Malaz Usta
Mei Liu
The Netherlands／Artist, Filmmaker, Performance-maker
Mei Liu is an artist, filmmaker, and performance-maker based in Amsterdam, originally from Shanghai. Her practice explores speculative fiction rooted in social reality, embodied memory, and collective resistance.
Mei is a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (2026). She received her MA in Artistic Research in and through Cinema at the Netherlands Film Academy and BFA in Film Production from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She participated in the Apichatpong Weerasethakul film lab in the Amazon jungle and was supported by Forecast to work with artist mentor Lieko Shiga. Her performances have been shown at Theater Commons Tokyo, Tokyo Arts and Space, Eye Filmmuseum, Radialsystem, and her films screened at Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, WORM Pirate Bay, West Lake International Documentary Festival.
She is interested in alternative structures, dreams, and the mystical realms of existence. Mei strives to create new commons such as filmmaking spaces that disrupt existing hierarchies and interactions in society. She is the co-founder of Cenote Workshop, a Shanghai-based collaborative community project anchored in spiritual activism that hosts improvisational performance workshops in an attempt to reawaken our relationship with the immaterial world around us; she is also a co-founder of Electric Shadows, an Amsterdam-based interdisciplinary artist collective and artist-run space with members from Iran, Syria, Mexico, and China.
Mei is a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (2026). She received her MA in Artistic Research in and through Cinema at the Netherlands Film Academy and BFA in Film Production from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She participated in the Apichatpong Weerasethakul film lab in the Amazon jungle and was supported by Forecast to work with artist mentor Lieko Shiga. Her performances have been shown at Theater Commons Tokyo, Tokyo Arts and Space, Eye Filmmuseum, Radialsystem, and her films screened at Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, WORM Pirate Bay, West Lake International Documentary Festival.
She is interested in alternative structures, dreams, and the mystical realms of existence. Mei strives to create new commons such as filmmaking spaces that disrupt existing hierarchies and interactions in society. She is the co-founder of Cenote Workshop, a Shanghai-based collaborative community project anchored in spiritual activism that hosts improvisational performance workshops in an attempt to reawaken our relationship with the immaterial world around us; she is also a co-founder of Electric Shadows, an Amsterdam-based interdisciplinary artist collective and artist-run space with members from Iran, Syria, Mexico, and China.
2026 project
MY BODY IS A RESONANCE CHAMBER
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Illustrated by Moeno Ootsu
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©︎Mei Liu
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©︎Stephan Talneau
1/3
An emerging performance maker born in Shanghai and based in Amsterdam reclaims sensitivities for surviving times of turmoil.
Re-imagining and employing the body as a chamber of resonance for solidarity, resistance, and care.
Mei Liu, born in Shanghai and based in Amsterdam, presents a new live film performance that interweaves documentary and fictional material. In a world saturated with structural violence and trauma caused by digital media, the work asks how the body can function as a site for memory, resistance, and reconnection with others through a docufiction that blends fact and fiction.
Through embodied practices such as meditation, Liu examines how global crises—war, censorship, environmental devastation—settle in our nervous systems, opening parts of this research to Kinosaki residents through workshops.
Centering on a fictional woman who swallowed a microSD card to evade a police raid, the performance layers video, sound, and live footage to bring forth the body as a resonance chamber.
Re-imagining and employing the body as a chamber of resonance for solidarity, resistance, and care.
Mei Liu, born in Shanghai and based in Amsterdam, presents a new live film performance that interweaves documentary and fictional material. In a world saturated with structural violence and trauma caused by digital media, the work asks how the body can function as a site for memory, resistance, and reconnection with others through a docufiction that blends fact and fiction.
Through embodied practices such as meditation, Liu examines how global crises—war, censorship, environmental devastation—settle in our nervous systems, opening parts of this research to Kinosaki residents through workshops.
Centering on a fictional woman who swallowed a microSD card to evade a police raid, the performance layers video, sound, and live footage to bring forth the body as a resonance chamber.
