A queer Chinese artist finds liberation through folk art

During the years he hid his sexuality from his children and village neighbors, Xiyadie used short-bladed scissors on rice paper and gave shape to unfulfilled dreams.

At first glance, his creations conform to traditional carved designs of animals and auspicious symbols that adorn doorways and windows in China. But a closer look at the shapes – birds, butterflies and blossoms perched on winding vines – reveals bodies linked in the throes of intimacy or separated by brick walls.

The artist, 60, who goes by the pseudonym Xiyadie, was born in a farming village in northern China, and he makes strange paper cuts. Paper cutting is a folk tradition from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 CE), which involves cutting sharp lines and shapes into folded layers of rice paper. It’s about cutting away the negative space to reveal the image within.

Xiyadie’s home province of Shanxi was a center for folk art; in his hometown, paper cuts marked births, weddings and New Year’s celebrations. The women in the village passed on the craft to their daughters and daughters-in-law. Xiyadie said he learned it by observing his mother and village matriarchs.

He usually cut freehand, sometimes using the indentations he made with his fingernails as outlines, and then painted his creations with green, pink, red and yellow pigments. He began making homoerotic paper cutouts in the 1980s as he struggled with his hidden sexuality, but he kept these works to himself for years.

Until 1997, homosexuals in China were at risk of persecution; Homosexuality was only removed from the official list of mental disorders drawn up by the Chinese Society of Psychiatry in 2001.

“I put the feelings for men that I wasn’t allowed to have into my creations,” he said in a telephone interview.

In China, many artists who have achieved success have received formal training at elite art schools, and the most visible queer artists tend to come from relatively privileged urban backgrounds. Mimi Chun, founder and director of Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong. Xiyadie, on the other hand, creates extended scenes from his time as a closeted farmer and then as a migrant worker touring the Chinese capital.

“He bridges the gap between folk art and strangeness, building a dialogue between these two very different worlds,” she added.

The gallery will display more than 30 of his works during the exhibition “Xiyadie: Butterfly Dream,” of an opening reception and an artist talk on Saturday. The show continues Monday and runs through May 11. The pieces connect different chapters in his life, including one of his first sexual encounters.

“Train” (1986) shows Xiyadie locked in an embrace with a uniformed attendant, the figures’ legs moving along with the connecting rods. A green background surrounds them, as if to underline the natural order of his rendezvous; a rabbit raises a victorious red flag in celebration.

“The flowers and leaves, the sun, the moon and the birds are all part of my lingua franca – they convey my deepest thoughts,” said Xiyadie.

Xiyadie married a woman at the insistence of his family, he said. They had two children, and their son was paralyzed by cerebral palsy. Xiyadie cared for the children at home for several years while his wife worked in a hospital. The filmmaker Sha Qing documented the family’s struggle in a 2002 documentary: “Source,” years before Xiyadie became known as an artist.

Xiyadie described the early years of his marriage as a puppet show he couldn’t get out of. Towering walls or doors separated his home life from his secret rendezvous or fantasies. In “Sewn” (1999), he is stuck in a house with a traditional tiled roof. As he stares from the train at a photo of his lover (a recurring figure in his work), he sits atop a sword lying on its side and sews up his genitals, then pierces the roof with the giant sewing needle.

“I always wanted to break tradition and convention,” he said. “I wanted freedom. I wanted liberation.”

Years later, in 2005, he moved to Beijing in search of higher income and more artistic opportunities, discovering a vibrant gay community. His family remained in their hometown, but his son came to live with him in 2013 for better medical treatment in the capital.

He began using the city’s boating spaces as a backdrop in his work, depicting dance-like rendezvous and ecstatic orgies in parks.

“When I came to Beijing, I felt like a frozen butterfly flying towards spring,” he said.

He gained a following among queer art collectors in Beijing, and his 2010 debut at the now-closed Beijing LGBT Center has led to exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and the United States, including a 2023 solo exhibition at the Beijing LGBT Center. Drawing Center in New York. The pseudonym he chose after he began exhibiting his art, Xiyadie, translates to “Siberian Butterfly,” referencing the drafty cold of his hometown and the resilience required to pursue freedom.

“I’ve been cutting butterflies since the beginning,” he said. “It’s one of my strengths.”

In his work he often gave himself and his lovers wings. It is also a dream he cherished for his son, who could not walk and died in 2014. In ‘Hoping’ (2000), one of the most moving pieces depicting his family, his son rises from the wheelchair and sprouts wings, like a butterfly in metamorphosis.