LIU Hsing Yu was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1985. Since 2009, he has continued to develop his long-term photographic series My Parents, inviting his father to wear a wedding dress and his mother to dress in a suit. Set within the visual contexts of family portraits, wedding photography, and tourist snapshots, the series reconfigures familial roles and emotional relationships.
Moving between staged and documentary photography, Liu’s works unfold as image-based performances marked by humor, awkwardness, and intimacy, revealing the entanglement of love, expectation, and emotional labor within East Asian families. Incorporating collage, writing, and materials gathered on site, Liu received the KG＋SELECT Award 2024 at KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival, becoming the first Taiwanese artist to win the prize.
In 2014, Liu co-founded Walking Grass Agriculture, an art collective that engages with the relationships between agriculture, the environment, and contemporary society through artistic actions, field research, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. He has been nominated for the Global Gender Impact Award, and has received honors including the Selected Award of the Taipei Art Awards, the Grand Prix of the Taipei International Photography Award, and the Bronze Prize at Art Freedom Day Taipei. His work has been featured in international exhibitions such as Cosmopolis #2: Rethinking the Human at the Centre Pompidou. In recent years, through residencies and exhibition projects, Liu has continued to expand his practice across family imagery, local culture, and environmental concerns.