Ziyan Liu

Ziyan Liu | Knitting Botany

Your works often resemble extraterrestrial plants and surreal organisms. Can you describe how you research natural growth systems and then translate them into textile form?

I am drawn to living systems, especially plants, and I study them as images and as working systems. My research begins outdoors, touching surfaces, measuring spacing, and sketching so that the rhythm of a form, not just its silhouette, enters my hands. I also attend workshops at the Royal Botanic Gardens in London, where conversations with botanists and plant focused artists help me decide what to keep literal and what to translate. Of course, reading books is essential, and artists’ botanical drawings also form an important part of my research. Back in the studio, I rely on sustained drawing and on site sketching to distill information from plants, and through drawing and reflection I give these forms a second life.

What I value most are the unique characteristics of each plant. In my knitted cactus series, the spines suggest a natural defensive quality, and people often associate them with resilience, danger, and a warning to keep their distance because they can cause injury. However, if you look closely, beneath each spine is a soft, water rich body.This leads me to use textile art to translate and magnify these often overlooked details, turning them into soft plant forms that reveal the cactus’s inner essence. Color is a strong way to amplify each plant’s personality, so I use bold, high-contrast color to heighten the visual impact. Therefore, I focus on a plant’s character and inner life, and when I spend time with a plant I treat it as a private conversation between us.

You often speak of “letting the textiles happen.” How do you balance spontaneous creation with the technical planning required for large-scale knitted sculptures?

This idea is a guiding principle for me, not a response to scale. “Letting the textiles happen” means allowing a piece to grow from a single strand with as few interruptions as possible, so form emerges from the inner logic of material and structure rather than from layers of added technique. Much textile art today values stacking methods and complex steps, but what matters to me is returning to the earliest attitude of textile making: begin with one yarn, aim for one piece, and let the interaction of fiber and stitch generate vitality and presence. It is about freeing the nature of the textile so it can “happen” in front of you.

Planning still matters, but it serves as gentle guardrails rather than a rigid blueprint. I set a simple gauge and a few clear rules, then allow controlled drift while working so the fabric can find its own path. So, when the work is large, the concept does not change. I may scale proportionally, change gauge, hold multiple yarns together, or stage sections on different beds and then join them in a way that preserves continuity. The choices are technical solutions to size, but the core remains the same: trust the material, keep the process direct, and let the textile speak.

Ziyan Liu | Knitting Botany

Color is a key element in your work. What is your process for choosing and combining colors to achieve such vivid and unexpected palettes?

Color to me is mood and judgment made visible, a system of memory signs through which each palette records a day like a diary entry, with pages of color that carry sensation as well as thought.

Observation comes first, not as isolated snapshots but as continuous scenes in which gardens after rain, markets at dusk, and neon reflections on wet pavements offer chromatic relationships that already breathe; I gather them through quick sketches, small swatches, and simple photos in order to study how hues meet and change in real light.

In the studio, these notes become a steady, exploratory process that nudges a color from the familiar toward the surprising, favoring balances where a saturated tone gains depth beside a quieter neighbor and where subtle contrasts wake a hue without overwhelming it. Memory is also important, it keeps steering the work, since palettes from earlier travels, artworks that linger in the mind, and plants studied up close form a living archive that I revisit whenever a piece asks for direction. Thus my color choices emerge through a calm, deliberate phase in which one color may step aside to let the others speak, or a single accent may enter to tilt the atmosphere, so the final palette feels vivid, layered, and a little unexpected, yet remains grounded in the visible world I move through each day.

Ziyan Liu | Knitting Botany

You frequently integrate non-textile materials such as building debris, glass, and 3Dprinted parts. What inspires these cross-material experiments, and what new possibilities do they bring?

I regard every material as a unique product of our planet, and each carries a distinctive, irreplaceable character. That leads me to be a material lover who enjoys studying and collecting different substances, whether soft or hard. I also believe that combining them can spark unexpected effects, provided they are introduced in measured and appropriate ways so their interplay can create real chemistry.

I often collect things that seem useless or unrelated to textiles because they can open new directions and inspire me. This not only makes my practice more engaging and interesting, it also prompts me to imagine what role each could play in textile art, especially when I touch a material and feel an immediate connection. In particular, construction debris and other seemingly worthless materials can be reused and given new life. Materials such as glass or resin, in my view, offer dramatic visual tension while balancing the suppleness of textiles, and they can make the inner toughness and endurance of textile work visible. To me, that is the charm and pleasure of mixed media, and a form of cooperation and friendship between materials.

Your “Knitting Cactus” series and “Knitting Glass” project explore very different textures and concepts. How do you decide when a new series or material direction is ready to begin?

For me, a new direction never begins at the computer. It begins in the hands and out in nature. I usually wait for three clear signals. First, the material starts speaking back. I handle the same yarn, a shard of glass, or a piece of discarded rubble again and again, and the same sensation returns to my fingers each time. Sometimes there is a faint sting beside softness, or a cool shine that insists on being seen. Having a daily material practice is also important, such as keeping small samples in my pockets and on the studio table and living with them to see whether they keep calling me. When I

feel blocked, I slow down and observe the world around me. Quiet looking helps, as do exhibitions; learning from other artists is often a fast and effective way to spark fresh ideas.

Second, the movement becomes fluent. If I can move in one breath from a quick drawing to a small test and then to a first wearable or hanging piece, without adding extra decoration to make it work, I know the idea has momentum. The process feels like a path that appears as I step forward. Then I return to research, visiting material markets and different workshops to test things in person, building a clear mental catalogue of materials.

Third, a clear question arrives, one I want to answer with a whole project of works. Knitting Cactus began when I kept asking how sting and tenderness could live in one skin. Knitting Glass began when I noticed the cold light of glass next to the warmth of fiber and wondered how to let both remain visible.

When these signals align, I stop hesitating, clear a wall, name the direction, and begin, trusting the work to tell me what comes next.

Ziyan Liu | Knitting Botany

As both an artist and a PhD researcher, how does your academic investigation feed into your studio practice—and vice versa?

In the academy, inquiry helps me frame better questions for the studio, and the studio gives those questions a body. I keep a steady rhythm that moves from reading to making and back again. After a period of focused reading, I write short prompts in plain language and turn them into small trials in yarn, color, and form. Each trial has a clear aim and a simple checklist of what to observe, such as hand feel, drape, changes under light, and durability after gentle wear.

Creating feels open and low in limitations, while research is a cautious and rigorous process, so everything is documented: I keep dated notes, quick sketches, and photographs of each stage, along with a materials log that records source, treatment, and outcome. This record lets me compare results over time and separate what is repeatable from what was a lucky accident. When a result looks promising, I scale the test into a first piece and invite feedback from peers. Their questions reveal blind spots that I take back to reading and writing.

Moreover, academic habits sharpen the studio and my creative thinking. Drawing on methods from art history, design studies, and material research helps me name what I am seeing and avoid vague claims; in turn, studio habits sharpen the academy. When unexpected behaviors in fabric or color appear, they lead me to new sources and conversations, and sometimes to a different way of looking. For example, exhibitions become real world case studies, while essays help me clarify decisions and set the next round of trials. Meanwhile, reading essays remains an efficient and relaxing way to explore the project and keep up with recent work in the field.

Ziyan Liu | Knitting Botany

Digital culture and cyber aesthetics play a strong role in your work. How do you imagine the future relationship between textiles and virtual worlds?

About the future relationship between textiles and virtual worlds, the two can be joined through many technological paths, and they should be partners rather than rivals. This means fabric is not only worn but also experienced, collected, and rehearsed in digital space before and after it exists in the studio, not only on a gallery floor. For example, textile techniques can be translated into gesture inputs that a computer or an AI system can read; with tools such as TouchDesigner and other digital platforms, human gestures and movements can build a piece on screen in real time, showing how a textile grows under the hands and even with the whole body. Another interesting approach is to make dyeing and printing interactive so that anyone can control electronic components to create a personalized printed fabric. In this sense, virtual worlds and textiles collaborate, and for public audiences that collaboration can be playful and inviting.

As for how the two meet in practice, the future may lean toward a more digital sensibility in textiles, not only inside virtual scenes but also as tangible art that can be touched. The visual language of virtual worlds can be translated into materials through colors, forms, and concepts that do not yet exist in everyday life, supported by collaboration with artists from other fields, which definitely gives us more possibilities to explore. So I think the exchange runs both ways: virtual worlds offer textiles new stages and tools, while textiles give virtual ideas warmth and presence. Together they will continue to grow in exciting ways.