About

Viviane Yijiun Lian is a French-Taiwanese artist based in London. Her figurative oil paintings explore the visual languages common to theatre and academic painting traditions. As a self-taught artist, Lian works both within and without the academic tradition of painting, exploring the paradoxes of its aesthetics as she brings its old-world notions of romanticism and melancholy into contact with modern concepts of the power of beauty in society.

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Inspired by the Dutch Golden Age, Baroque painting and the symbolist and decadent literature of the late 19th century, Lian is drawn to themes of beauty, transience, and decline. Her practice bridges these influences and motifs, engaging with both classical traditions and contemporary ideas of the human experience.

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Her first series, Death Rites, delves into the liminal space between life and death, exploring moments of transition where the physical and immaterial converge. Drawing on her academic background in anthropology, Lian investigates the intersections of death rituals, femininity, and group psychology. Through these works, she reflects on how social practices surrounding death shape collective identity and influence our experiences of transition, loss, and the unknown. In a cultural sense, this series speaks to the universality of death and the rituals that emerge globally to mark its passage. It positions these rites as fundamentally human practices that transcend boundaries of time and belief, affirming our collective humanity and interconnectedness across cultures and epochs.

 

Lian’s next series interprets Joris-Karl Huysmans’ infamous novel Against Nature, by which she continues her exploration into themes of death, decay, and aestheticism.