Utställningar & projekt
Silent Witness
A Solo Exhibition by Liu Lifen
July 1 – August 10, 2026
Opening Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 11:00–15:00 (Closed Mondays)
Venue: Lifen Gallery, Hallska Gården, Hahn gränd 2, Gränna, Sweden
The Observer series explores the act of looking. Observation here is not distance, but an attentive form of presence. It suspends the impulse to explain, judge, or assign meaning, choosing instead to remain with what is unfolding—to look quietly, and to witness with patience.
In an age of acceleration and perpetual noise, we are constantly called upon to react, to speak, and to keep pace with the endless flow of information. Along the way, we have lost the capacity to simply look.
Choosing to live in the countryside is not an escape from the city or from reality, but a return to a slower, more truthful rhythm of time. The countryside becomes both a method of seeing and a mode of living. Slowing down is not a retreat from progress, but an opportunity to encounter the world—and ourselves—with renewed attention.
About the Artist:
1979 Born in Yunnan, China. Artist based in Småland Sweden and Kunming China. Lifen graduated from Yunnan Arts Institute, majoring in Traditional Chinese Painting with bachelor degree.
In recent years, my practice has centered on oil painting on canvas and works on paper. Through a distilled nocturnal palette, I explore emotional introspection and the quiet strength of stillness—a space where silence becomes a source of resilience, absorbing and releasing its subtle force.
The Forest Wanderings series is rooted in my experience of living with my child in the countryside. Within the forest, feelings of smallness, solitude, and tranquility coexist. The intertwined rhythms of caring for oneself and caring for another life gradually unfold as layered relationships of stillness and movement, coolness and vitality.
Lifen has received scholarships and participate in artist residency programs/exhibitions in Switzerland, Australia, Sweden, the United States, Thailand and China.
Recent solo exhibition including:
“Walk in the Woods”, Piratenhuset in Trånas (2025);
“Growing Toward the Sun”, LOCAL project, Kultivera in Trånas (2025);
“Lullaby: Liu Lifen 2022-2024”, Luo Xu Museum in Kunming, China (2024); “Sweet Home”, Konstnärshuset Svavel in Jönköping (2024);
“Kinesiska skogsmeditationer”, Eksjö Museum (2023);
“Nattalv”, F48 Gallery, Oslo (2021).
Art works collected by Jönköpings läns museum, Jönköping Region, Eksjö Kommun, Tranås Kommun, Gislaveds Kommun, Våra Gårdar, Tranås Konstförening, Hyllie Park Folkhögskola, and international private collections.