Fang Liu (Summer) is a visionary curator and creative producer based in London, whose intersection of contemporary art, cultural industry, cultural research, and spatial storytelling redefines the aesthetic domain as a catalyst for transformation. With a focus on ecology and collective memory, Liu turns exhibitions into immersive experiences – realms where art is sensorially rich, becoming a living platform for collective imagination, cultural dialogue, transformative experience, and empowerment. She is the founder of Zero to One, a pioneering platform amplifying Chinese contemporary art internationally, and co-founded Asian Girls Club for the emancipation of Asian women artists.
In her recent exhibition Between The Worlds: Poetics of the Fragile and the Invisible, at LookLookLook Gallery (Paris, 15–30 July 2025), the refinement of her vision begins with the subtle yet potent dialogue she establishes between space, materials and artworks. The intimacy and domesticity inherent in the gallery’s architecture – its homely-sized rooms, wooden structures and stone walls -converse with painterly, photographic and video languages to evoke fleeting memories and transformative aesthetics. The chosen works are lyrical. Some are bucolic scenes rendered in vivid emerald-green; others appear as small-scale ultramarine motifs dispersed across space, demanding close and inquisitive engagement from the viewer. Only careful proximity and contemplation reveal the picturesque within Liu’s curated assemblage.
As the Executive Curator of ArtEvol 2025: Voices from the Undefined, at Saatchi Gallery (London, September 2025), Liu fostered interdisciplinary dialogue, challenging boundaries between nature and technology, and self and society. She explores technology’s progress and its relation to the utmost expression of humanity: the body. Drawing on post-colonial categories of ‘self’ and ‘otherness’ as relational methodology, the interaction of the human body and the tech domain stems from both real and symbolic scenarios. Liu points to the inner logic merging the ancestral link of humans with nature, and the inexorable posthuman urge to blur the boundary between physiological and technological beings. This symbolic act of communion is apparent throughout the curatorial rationale, which foregrounds the potency of experimental gestures, the outreach of the collaborative, and the poignancy of multimedia assemblages. Liu allows silenced voices from distant cultural and geographic margins to occupy, based on relationality, a locus of enunciation through art.
Her curatorial narrative resonates with major international projects such as Foreigners Everywhere (60th Venice Biennale, 2024), which explored ‘othership’ through relation/contrast, revealing the invisibility of migrants, Indigenous people and gender-based identities; Shanshui: Echoes and Signals (Hong Kong, 2024/25), where relational thought in multimedia expressions drew on correspondences between human and landscape; and the Asia Pacific Triennial (Brisbane, 2024/25), where reciprocal encounters across cultural contexts favoured a pluriverse of practices.
Poetic clarity, fluidity, and a commitment to visibility for marginalised voices surface consistently in her work. Central to Liu’s conceptual acumen is the decolonisation of art institutions, which, through geopolitical and social frameworks, have denied visibility and epistemic authority to groups deemed as ‘outsiders’. Ultimately, her utmost sophistication is the ability to mobilise subtlety and evocation to assert a politicised viewpoint.
Written by Kalinca Costa Söderlund
