Grasping Flies, collage, marker, and gouache on paper, 11” x 14”
As a Taiwanese American artist, Kathy Liao has lived between two cultural worlds, her birthplace of Taiwan and the United States, where she was raised since her teenage years. Her artistic practice typically has focused on understanding her identity in the context of each new place she has lived, drawing from outward experiences of family connection and immigration. In “We Met In A Dream,” at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, she turns inward, navigating an entirely different terrain: the subconscious. In this latest body of work, Liao delves into psychological landscapes and nocturnal narratives — worlds that emerge only while dreaming. These intimate dreamscapes, derived from her ongoing practice of dream journaling, offer a new, vulnerable dimension to her work.
Liao’s imagery oscillates between visual storytelling with hints of surreal, illusory subject matter and abstractions that act as transitions to the next chapter within a story, creating a rhythm that echoes the disjointed logic of dreams. Collage is her primary medium — layered with magazine cutouts, hand-drawn elements, and washes of paint and colored pencil, each piece is a tactile archive of thought and feeling. These works often blur the line between flat image and subtle sculptural surfaces.
“I see dreaming as a subconscious collage, I turn to the medium of collage to invite intuitive connections,” she notes. “I start loosely with my dream narrative, flipping through magazines and printed materials, I allow images, words, and visual language to emerge through the act of attunement and response. This way of working with collage feels both serendipitous and intentional.”
In “What’s Left of Grief,” a hand is outstretched balancing chopsticks, reaching toward a blurry unknown pile. One may initially assume a pile of food but comes to the unsettling realization it is teeth and bones. Liao recounts this dream and how it ties to her personal experience with grief, “When my dad was cremated, as the eldest daughter, I was handed a pair of chopsticks to pick up his bones from the ashes to place in the urn, as per tradition. While desperately trying to keep it together, I dreamt of picking up teeth and bones, as they crumbled into oblivion.”
Most of us can relate to the feeling of waking from a dream — some are elusive and others, so vivid one spends time immersed in that alternate reality, trying to untangle a message or meaning. Dreams transcend place and time and are a mysterious part of the human condition. “Through the medium of dream, my brain collages together disparate elements, from recent experiences to the subconscious and the dormant. I appreciate how indiscriminate it is with the source material, unhindered by conditioning and bias,” Liao explains.In “We Met In A Dream,” Kathy Liao invites viewers to enter this internal space — to drift, interpret, and, perhaps, find fragments of their own nocturnal narratives mirrored back at them.
With May being Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month , Liao is excited to share the inclusion of her recipe in “Word of Mouth: Asian American Artists Sharing Recipes,” an artists’ cookbook edited and illustrated by Laura Kina and Jave Yoshimoto featuring stories and artwork from 23 Asian American and Asian diaspora artists from across the United States. Each contribution is accompanied by an original illustration and enriched by the artist’s reflections on how their cuisine has been impacted by histories of war, migration, relocation, labor or mixing. A pandemic project turned illustrated cookbook, this unique collection disrupts genre expectations to celebrate how artists use food to nurture and sustain their diverse communities and artistic practices as well as to build connection during times of isolation, grief and loss.
Kathy Liao: “We Met In A Dream” continues through May 24 at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, 2004 Baltimore Ave. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday- Saturday. For more information. 816. 221.2626 or sherryleedy.com.
