Pixy Liao has recently received a special juror’s mention at this year’s Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards for her project ‘Experimental Relationship Vol.1 2007-2017’. The project is a playful and highly intimate examination of sex, gender and power dynamics of Pixy Liao’s relationship with her Japanese boyfriend. Her work challenges with strong elements of humour and sexuality the changing and evolving relationship with her lover. The photographs challenge traditional roles and archetypes of heterosexual relationships revealing a sense of masculine vulnerability and codependency. The project has been turned into a book and it shows 77 photographs in four apartments the couple lived in together over the years. The design is in yellow, a cheeky reference to the yellow often used in Chinese pornography books. She does this because Liao describes are photographs as naughty like pornography. The photographs also reveal clashes of culture and sexuality between Japanese and Chinese stereotypes of another. The book is a beautiful and distinctly intimate portrayal of love, heterosexuality and the changing nature of life.
http://pixyliao.com/ Experimental Relationship Vol.1 2007-2017 is available to purchase from Jiazazhi, priced at €45.