Liu Yin often creates lovely images and transforms them into installation works. The cartoon and caricature images in her works are inspired by comic books she read in childhood, and also visual projections generated in her mind unconsciously. According to Liu, those innocent, clumsy and careless rabbits exactly represent her rich inner feelings. Therefore, she builds up a wonderland full of imagination with the neon installation Rabbits.

The rabbits are either floating in the air strangely or lying in a distorted way, seeming to be separated but still echoed by each other. They appear to chat silently, and a sense of detachment between the dream and the reality arises instantaneously. The images of rabbits have almost been distorted, representing a restoration of the artist’s sketches in childhood and her imagination of integrating herself with the scene. Those unknown patterns seem naive but together enrich the abstract unsolvable space.

With neon lights as the medium, the installation creates a fantasy world for the viewers with the light diffusing from the darkness. The intoxicating neon makes people stare at something or be in a daze for a long time. In a distance, the bright light can hit the viewers’ soul; in a close view, the viewers will recall the past behind the memory illusion created. This may be the childhood that everyone once experienced, but can never return.

(Edited by Li Hanning & Yang Zhige, 2021)