Reflexology at a Distance: Yujia Liu’s Mushrooms

We are happy to present Reflexology at a Distance: Interconnectedness of Opposites, the seventeenth online screening in the Cosmos Cinema Educational Film Program, as part of the 14th Shanghai Biennale. This week features Yujia Liu’s Mushrooms (2023, 13 mins).

In this film, the artist trains her lens on the boreal forests of Northeast Asia. Beneath the canopy’s dappled light, the camera follows the transfer of energy and information through the micro-ecosystems on the forest’s floor, presenting the interplay of mushrooms, moss, insects, and soil as a grand dance. Installed in the 14th Shanghai Biennale’s Reflexology at a Distance section, Mushrooms represents Yujia Liu’s meditative and symbolic work, which unsettles the line between straight documentary and narrative storytelling. Liu’s films often relegate humans to the status of minor characters by focusing on other forms of life and the connection between outer and inner cosmos.

The work is available for viewing through March 16 on cosmoscinema.art.

The Cosmos Cinema website is the place where the histories of cinema excavated in weekly screenings at the Power Station of Art meet the moving-image works of artists represented in the 14th Shanghai Biennale. Each week, in alignment with one of the nine thematic sections that structure Cosmos Cinema, a selected moving-image work by one its artists is presented online with new contextualizing information. The Cosmos Cinema website will feature work by artists including Itziar Barrio, Yin-Ju Chen, Saodat Ismailova, Deimantas Narkevičius, Liu Xin, Maha Maamoun, Agnieszka Polska, Raqs Media Collective, Ho Rui An, Liu Yujia, He Zike, Julieta Aranda, Jakub Štourač and Anna Lunakova, and Zhou Xiaohu, among many others. 

Cosmos Cinema Educational Film Program and online platform are made possible by .ART Registry.

It is also co-sponsored by Aesop and Humanities Research Center, Division of Arts and Humanities, and DKUNST Art on Campus of Duke Kunshan University.