Nan Liu, Black Lives Matter, Color and Ink on Xuan Paper, 27x54inches

In this two gallery, two-part installation, Nan Liu, a Chinese-American professor at Florida A&M University (FAMU), brings to his art an intriguing and intricate mix of his cultural and professional past and present — what he sees and what he knows. Born in Tianjin, China, in 1974, Nan Liu is an artist of a realist bent — and at the core of realist art is observation of one’s immediate world and the people who inhabit it.

As Liu explains:  “My vision reflects the multicultural nature of contemporary America. I depict a primarily African-American world as seen through Chinese-American eyes, with a sensibility that has been fused within both contemporary and classic influences from East and West. In my recent work, I attempt to create a series of life-size figurative paintings with ink medium. My chosen subjects are the students I walk amongst every day on the FAMU campus. Teaching at a historically Black college, most of my students are African-American.

During the last ten years, I have created over forty large-scale figurative ink portraits of FAMU students using traditional Chinese brush and colored ink, applying the traditional Xie Yi painting style, which emphasizes spontaneity of ink and color washes on Xuan paper (similar to American rice paper). In this series, I attempt to apply traditional Eastern painting media and concepts to represent the lives and world of my contemporary American students.”