Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu

Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu (b. 1982, Kaohsiung, Taiwan) is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker and writer whose work is grounded in literature and the conceptual avant-garde. Cherlyn’s creative activity often starts from a life event or curiosity concerning an anomaly in language or in the material world. It continues by employing methods drawn from both Eastern and Western practices and philosophies. Her working method at various times involves handcrafted material, mixed media, and experimental interchange between new and old technologies.

She studied Korean Language at Chinese Culture University in Taipei, Taiwan in 1999. She attended the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts from 2012 to 2018 and graduated with an MFA. 

Cherlyn’s media-based works have been shown internationally at venues and festivals including Edinburgh International Film Festival (UK), Helsinki Festival (Finland), Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris (France), 25 FPS Festival (Zagreb), Antimatter [Media Art] (Victoria, BC), Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (Taiwan), Women Make Waves Int'l Film Festival (TW), Ann Arbor Film Festival (USA), Crossroads Film Festival at SFMoMA, among others. She received the Jury’s First Prize at Women Make Waves Int'l Film Festival, Taiwan (2014), for the film Close-ups; the Jury Award at Ann Arbor Film Festival (2018) for the film How Old Are You? How Old Were You?; the Best Experimental Film Award at South Taiwan Film Festival (2019) for the film A Study of Fly.

Her writings include a novel, Write Across, published in 2008; a play Sorrows of the Island (Finalist for the Taiwan Literature Award, 2011); a short story, The Couch, (Lin Yutang Literary Judges Award, 2011); and a printed book, 日裸: Hsing-Hsin’s Poetry and Photography, published in 2013.

Besides artistic research and filmmaking, she is dedicated to education, activism, and organization. Cherlyn was a journalist and editor at Creation Publisher, focusing on young and emerging artists in the field of underground and contemporary art practices. In 2020/21, she taught two courses at CalArts: “Aesthetic Inquiries - Contemporary Asia” and “Gender & Sexuality in Asian Cinema - A Preliminary Study on Urban Phenomenon and Postmodern Cinema.” She serves as the Artistic Director of Square Root Collective and is one of the founders of Experimentalist Media Collective. 

She currently lives and works in the US.