Yes, Lucy Liu really does create lesbian art – and we’re completely obsessed
Lucy Liu creates beautiful paintings of women kissing and making love. (BEN GABBE/Patrick McMullan via Getty and Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty)
Lucy Liu creates beautiful paintings of women kissing and making love. (BEN GABBE/Patrick McMullan via Getty and Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty)
Actress, director, model, singer, dancer, human rights ambassador and Charlie’s Angel. These are just some of the ways you could describe Lucy Liu.
But what most of the internet didn’t know was that she creates lesbian art. As one X user put it: “What a time to be gay and alive.”
Liu began making art as a teenager, and had her first show in 1993 under her Chinese name Yu Ling. Some of her earliest work was a photography series of a pro-choice march in Washington, DC.
She soon realised she couldn’t express herself fully with photography and moved into other mediums. She makes sculpture, collages, uses embroidery, silkscreen and found objects, and most importantly creates huge paintings of women kissing and making love.
Where do I fall on the Kinsey scale? Somewhere between Whitney Houston’s best friend’s memoir and Lucy Liu’s art.
— LeeSean 立翔 (@leesean) November 7, 2019
Faced with this revelation, one X user wrote: “Where do I fall on the Kinsey scale? Somewhere between Whitney Houston’s best friend’s memoir and Lucy Liu’s art.”
Another said: “For Christmas I want Lucy Liu lesbian art.”
Speaking to Artsy, Liu said as a first generation immigrant a lot of her art was about finding a sense of belonging.
She said: “When I see something on the ground, I always feel badly for those items because they feel like they once had a purpose, once had a home, and they were no longer being utilised, they were disregarded. Something about that resonates with me.”
She said as a child she used to collect objects off the ground and keep them in a shadowbox. To this day, she always carries a Ziploc bag just in case.
Liu also told Artsy that she hopes when people look at her art, it changes them in some way.
The artist added: “When that happens, it’s such an inspiration, and it’s such a significant moment. It spurs you to be somebody different or more than you are already. [It] spurs you to do something different.”
It also happens to be Lucy’s birthday today (2 December), so here’s to you, Lucy Liu!
