In ten answers, photographer and filmmaker Tia Liu invites us into quiet spaces — where emotion lingers in silence, clothing becomes memory, and intimacy resists definition.
Edited by Michael Janke
HYPERMADE: Your images often drift between fragility and stillness. What attracts you to these unguarded, in-between states?
Tia Liu: I love those imperfect, unperformed moments — the pause after a laugh, the stillness in someone’s eyes when they think no one’s watching. There’s something deeply human in those unscripted spaces. I’m not interested in capturing perfection; I’m more curious about that soft edge where emotion wavers, and something slips through almost unnoticed. To
me, stillness and fragility hold immense power.
HYPERMADE: You once said that quiet moments speak the loudest. Do you remember a time when silence said something you couldn’t have captured in words?
Tia Liu: There were many moments, but the one that left the strongest imprint was during the pandemic. In Shanghai, we went through a full lockdown — for nearly two months, we weren’t allowed to step outside. One day, I had to leave home to do a medical check so I applied for a special permit and finally stepped out. The streets were completely empty, no people, barely any cars. I rented a shared bike and rode through the city. I could hear the sound of the wheels pressing against the asphalt — that’s how still everything was. It didn’t feel real. That silence wasn’t empty — it was full of everything we couldn’t say.
Courtesy of Tia Liu
HYPERMADE: Some of your portraits feel like gentle disappearances – people halfway between presence and withdrawal. Is emotional distance something you seek, or something you simply observe?
Tia Liu: It’s probably a mix of both. I do seek out those moments — when someone seems to drift back into themselves — but I never force it. It often starts from something I observe emotionally, and then I follow that feeling, gently extending it. I’ve always felt that human emotion carries a certain distance — even in intimacy, there’s space.
HYPERMADE: Clothing plays a subtle but persistent role in your work – almost like emotional architecture. How do garments shape the mood of your narratives?
Tia Liu: I like your analogy. Clothing for me, isn’t just visual — it’s emotional texture. I don’t treat garments as fashion statements, but as a way to hold mood. A loose jacket, a crumpled dress, a pair of heels at an odd hour — these small details tell you something about where someone has been, or what they’re holding inside. In a way, the clothes help shape the silence in the image. They build a soft context for what’s felt but not said.
HYPERMADE: In Still Wearing Last Night, exhaustion becomes visual poetry. Can fashion carry the weight of feeling?
Tia Liu: I think so, but only when it steps away from performance. The idea of “still wearing” gestures toward emotional residue — traces of a night, a feeling, or a moment that hasn’t quite left. Clothing becomes a clue: not just what someone wears, but how they feel while wearing it.
Courtesy of Tia Liu
HYPERMADE: Your photographs blur the line between staging and surrender. How do you decide when a frame is “done”?
Tia Liu: I rely a lot on intuition. In photography, it’s often hard to catch the most emotionally resonant moment — it’s fleeting, and almost impossible to recreate once it passes. So I stay alert for that small shift: a change in someone’s eyes, a breath, a pause. I shoot with a sense of quiet urgency, trying to catch that moment before it disappears. A frame feels “done” when it holds that flicker — when something real, however small, has passed through.
HYPERMADE: Do you recall the first image you made that truly felt like a mirror – something undeniably yours?
Tia Liu: I want to be frank — I’m still searching and waiting for that image to come.
HYPERMADE: You work across photography and moving image. What can one medium whisper that the other cannot?
Tia Liu: Moving image unfolds in time — it draws you into the creator’s world through rhythm, pacing, and sequence. As a viewer, you often experience it first and reflect afterwards. Photography, by contrast, is still. Its space feels more open. For me, a photograph leaves more room for personal interpretation and reflection in the present moment. That said, moving image can offer a more vivid, immersive experience — especially through sound and motion. It speaks in a different emotional frequency. I turn to photography when I want silence, and to film when I want breath and rhythm.
Courtesy of Tia Liu
HYPERMADE: How do you define beauty in a world that often confuses perfection with truth?
Tia Liu: To me, beauty is not about perfection, it’s about presence. It lives in something emotionally honest, even if it’s messy or unresolved. I don’t look for polished surfaces.
HYPERMADE: Your current project explores queer motherhood. What kinds of tenderness or resistance do you hope to document?
Tia Liu: In this project, I hope to document tenderness as something quietly radical—moments of care, intimacy, and daily rituals shared between queer mothers and their children. At the same time, I’m interested in the resistance embedded in their everyday realities: navigating legal systems that don’t recognize them, challenging narrow definitions of family, or holding space for both queerness and motherhood in environments that often try to erase one or the other.
HYPERMADE: Thank you, Tia, for your honesty, your sensitivity — and for reminding us that stillness, too, can speak.
Courtesy of Tia Liu
Tia Liu is a London-based Chinese visual artist working across photography and moving image. Her work is always in search of something subtle, such as the vulnerability and intimacy within human emotions. She believes that softness holds immense power. With a background in journalism, she tends to observe the world as an outsider, then explore how individual feelings are shaped by broader social contexts. Her practice blends personal narratives with wider emotional inquiries.
