Xuanzi Liu is a visual storyteller working across film, theatre, and interdisciplinary art. Moving between narrative and experimental forms, her work explores how interior psychological realities are shaped, and often distorted, by social structures, memory, and gaze. Through a synthesis of sound, image, and embodied performance, she is drawn to storytelling that destabilizes fixed perspectives and frames visual experience as a holistic, sensorial encounter.

Originally from Beijing, Xuanzi has lived, studied, and worked artistically across China, including in Shanghai, Changshu (Jiangsu), and Hangzhou. She currently studies Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Washington, where she uses close film analysis and theory to develop a stronger auteurist sensibility and a disciplined approach to visual composition.

In 2024, Xuanzi wrote, directed, and performed in Zhou (宙, 2024), an experimental physical theatre work presented at Shanghai Suoshi Theater. The piece examines the psychological aftermath of sexual abuse through fragmented movement, voice, and spatial composition, foregrounding the process of internal integration rather than linear narrative resolution. In 2025, she wrote and directed the short film Luoyang (洛阳亲友如相问, 2025), filmed in Hangzhou, which explores how heteronormative frameworks shape the perception of intimate relationships, using color, temporal disjunction, and restrained performance to reveal unspoken tensions.

Xuanzi’s artistic perspective is informed by Jungian psychology and feminist theory, shaping her interest in subjectivity, repression, and the politics of perception. Across film, theatre, and poetry, she approaches sound and image as inseparable elements of meaning-making, treating cinema not only as a narrative medium but as a space where psychological and emotional truths can be formally articulated.

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