Boya Liang
MFA
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Graduates: 2025
Specialisms: Installation/Sculpture / Film / Photography
My location: Vancouver, Canada
Boya Liang
First Name: Boya
Last Name: Liang
University / College: Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Course / Program: MFA
Graduates: 2025
Specialisms: Installation/Sculpture / Film / Photography
My Location: Vancouver, Canada
Website: Click To See Website
About
As an artist engaged with the exploration of existence, time, and the essence of being, Boya Liang navigates the confluence of art, science, and philosophy through a life marked by cultural nomadism. Drawing from her Chinese heritage and informed by her experiences across diverse cultures, her practice is a continuous quest to articulate the fluid nature of being. In each piece, she strives to capture her philosophical belief that our lives are part of a larger, ongoing cycle of existence. She employs deeply resonant materials such as incense and human hair, and mediums including photography, moving images, and installations, to reveal the invisible threads connecting the microcosm of individual existence to the macrocosm of the cosmos.
风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers explores how uncertainty can become a space of possibility, rather than a condition to overcome. Drawing on the Daoist principle of wu-wei (无为,effortless action), this installation creates an environment where transformation is emergent rather than imposed. Suspended sheets of Xuan paper curve like breath exhaled but never dispersed, holding traces of burnt incense, unfolding through daily rituals that accumulate like moments suspended in time. Smoke drifts. Ash accumulates. Layers of time become visible in the traces left behind. The work choreographs space, shaping how the viewer’s body moves through it. The time spent in making translates into the time a viewer spends experiencing. Each person brings their own duration and rhythm, their presence affecting the space just as the space affects them. The space shifts with each breath, each movement. The work invites a different kind of attention: not to understand, but to experience. To feel the constant becoming in uncertainty.
Competitions
