When the Body Becomes the Work: Review of Yilun Liu’s art practice

Can the artwork exist without the audience? I return to this question often when I think about Yilun Liu. Can a work exist without the people who enter the space and breathe inside it? And what unfolds when the performer’s body becomes the central material, moving through an environment shaped for it? What shifts when that body begins to choose for itself? Authorship becomes the question rather than the answer, and the lines blur between artist, instruction, performer and observer. Liu designs these environments, but the work only truly begins when someone chooses to step inside. And then, another question lingers underneath: Can the artwork exist without the body? 

Liu is an interdisciplinary artist working between performance, interactive installation and spatial design. Born in China and now based in London, she started in architecture before finding her way into performance and installation, where the two now fold into each other. She creates environments that invite people to move, observe, and dwell—without demanding anything in return.

Liu’s work Cat’s Cradle, created in 2023, draws on a childhood game with the same name, usually played with a single loop of string and a pair of hands. The player manipulates the loop into as many figures as possible, always risking that the next figure would become impossible to untie. In Liu’s version, she becomes the player, and the performers become her fingers. The piece extends the earlier questions and proposes another: Can the artwork exist without the artist?

The work intensifies this relationship between structure and performer. A suspended web of lines waits for the dancer, delicate yet insistent. Each movement forms new geometries, knots and openings. The performer tests the limits, and the structure presses back. Liu built a round platform that tilts toward one side or the other depending on the dancers’ movement. Trust and balance become material here.  Here, balance and trust are not just thematic—they’re tangible. The performers rely on the stability of the artist’s construction and the mutual weight of each other. Two bodies form a system, fully interdependent.

Her later work, Out of the Skin, in the Wind, shown in London in 2025, embodies this sensibility. Built from worn clothing, a fan and a projection of the prerecorded performance, the installation evokes the sensation of stepping inside someone else’s memory. Dancers move through the fabric, their gestures shaped by airflow, closeness and the histories held in everyday objects. The audience stands only a few steps away. Their presence changes how the scene feels and how the dancers move. Out of the Skin, in the Wind pays attention to the small, unspoken interactions that happen when people share a space.

In the broader context of performance and spatial practice, Liu distinguishes herself through her capacity to make architecture feel intimate and responsive. She has exhibited across London and internationally where her work contributes to ongoing conversations about embodiment, witness, and the ethics of shared space.

Her practice consistently circles back to core questions: Can art stand without the audience? Without the body present in the space? And how far can the artist step back? She explores what happens when the artist initiates a process—and the space, along with those who enter it, carries it forward. Liu’s work is already making a significant mark in contemporary performance and interaction design. She builds spaces where architecture listens, where the body becomes a thinking agent, and where the act of witnessing completes the piece.