Jialei Cici Liu was named after the eighty-eighth element radium (镭 léi). Radium’s luminous glow brought the invisible into view, a metaphor that parallels her work’s desire to illuminate the ephemeral--encompassing both wonder and peril— and reflects her exploration of life: creation and destruction, beauty, desire, and sacrifice.


Color is not merely a surface element but a repository of memory and meaning. Drawing from the discipline of Chinese painting and its reverence for a single brushstroke’s energy and spirit, painting is her language to navigate cultural intersections, where abstraction and color act as vessels of memory, meaning, and feeling. She seek to transform fleeting moments into shared language and wonder. Histories, literature and interpretations of colors inform her material and visual choices, reflecting the complexities of human experience. Her practice is steeped in curiosity, seeking to unearth deeper truths about personal belonging, displacement, and collective memory.