The Armory Show 2026: Booth P27
Yiwei Gallery is pleased to participate in The Armory Show 2026 with a solo presentation of new works by Liu Tianlian. Transforming Booth P27 into a reimagined New York laundromat, the presentation features paintings from the artist’s ongoing Laundry Room series. Working primarily on silk with traditional Chinese pigments, Liu reinterprets the meticulous brushwork of gongbi (工笔画) through a contemporary lens. Inspired by everyday environments associated with immigrant life, her dreamlike compositions explore migration, cultural identity, memory, and belonging, transforming the laundromat from an ordinary urban setting into a site of cultural encounter.
At The Armory Show 2026, Yiwei Gallery will present a solo booth dedicated to Liu Tianlian (b. 1987), transforming Booth P27 into a reimagined New York laundromat featuring paintings from the artist’s ongoing Laundry Room series. Liu reinterprets gongbi (工笔画), the traditional Chinese practice of meticulous brush painting, through a contemporary lens. Working primarily on silk with traditional Chinese pigments, she brings the precision and delicacy of this centuries-old practice into dialogue with the visual language and social realities of contemporary urban life.
Since immigrating to the United States in 2023, Liu has become increasingly drawn to everyday environments associated with immigrant life—from laundromats and nail salons to street vendors and small neighborhood businesses. In her paintings, these familiar settings shift between observation and imagination, becoming dreamlike spaces through which she explores migration, cultural identity, memory, and belonging.
Extending Liu’s painted scenes into physical space, the installation will recreate elements of a New York laundromat within the booth. The presentation brings her imagined world into three dimensions, creating an immersive environment in which the laundromat becomes both an ordinary urban setting and a site of cultural encounter. Through the juxtaposition of traditional Chinese painting techniques and the vernacular landscape of contemporary New York, Liu reflects on how identities and traditions are carried, adapted, and reconstructed across places.
