Liu Yuehui 刘月会: Creating Ballpoint Pen Art

Artist Interview: Liu Yuehui’s Ballpoint Pen Art

Liu Yuehui is an artist who takes ballpoint pen art to a rarely seen level. Both technique and concept is equally important to the artist and the use of the pen as a tool has a deep-rooted meaning.

Liu Yuehui grew up in a small village in China – a settlement of roughly 300 families. When locating her village on the map, one would have to look into China’s Shandong Province, then further into Yuhuangmiao Township 玉皇庙镇, Yuncheng County 郓城县, and then, finally, the prefecture-level city Heze 菏泽市, where one would find Yuehui’s village  Zhangzhuang 张庄村. In China, these long addresses indicate that a place is very remote, indeed, and worlds away from the capital Beijing – let alone a European city, such as Berlin. Berlin is where Liu Yuehui finds herself living and working today. Her journey from a small village in China to the capital city in Germany is one that has deeply influenced her art making.

“Pursuing art is not considered a good future for a student,” explains Yuehui when asked about how artists are perceived among people in her village. From a young age, however, Yuehui excelled at drawing, in particular when it came to using the ballpoint pen technique. She even took part in competitions. Her parents supported her passion, despite their low income, and despite the stigma of an artist not being a stable profession.

When encountering Yuehui’s ballpoint pen art, one often forgets that the artist created them by using simple ballpoint pens – the same kind you can find in an office. The shapes and even the color tones are made up entirely of densely drawn pen markings – a feat that is staggering when faced with one of the artist’s vast 3 x 3 meter large works.

Liu Yuehui started creating ballpoint pen art at the age of six. At the time, her father gave her ball point pens to draw with, and in the beginning, it was the only medium she had available. Today, she continues to create ballpoint pen art – not out of necessity, but as a conscious continuation of her father’s memory.

Yuehui’s journey from the village of Zhangzhuang to the city of Berlin was marked by a turbulent time and a series of personal tragedies. When she was nine years old, Yuehui’s father passed away, plunging her family into an even more difficult financial situation. The loss of Yuehui’s father weighed very heavily on the young artist. Then, the death of her grandmother was yet another heavy blow that hit her when she had only just finished high school.

In 2010, after having studied Fine Art in China, Yuehui had the opportunity to travel to Europe and enrolled at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin to continue her art studies. This was a time of exploration, and a time in which Yuehui could develop as an artist through travel and open exchange.

2011, however, was a year in which a third tragedy struck especially hard. Yuehui lost her mother, and her time of happiness suddenly became a very dark period – but one in which she did not cease to create art.

“Drawing has always been a medicine,” she explained. In fact, Yuehui had always seen drawing as a means to forget, a way of escaping the world to immerse herself in another.

Her ballpoint pen art sometimes represents this kind of therapeutic, escapist way of diving into another world. A seated woman surrounded by a green meadow, for instance, or a portrait of a huge, hatted man, closing his eyes as though in deep thought…

However, in the years up to 2015, Liu Yuehui’s works also express tragedy, anger and dark humor. “Following the death of the three people who were closest to me, I felt like life was making a joke of me. So I decided to make a joke out of life in return!” she exclaimed.

Always using her ballpoint pen technique of densely drawn lines, Yuehui created a series of unusual characters, some resembling monsters or fairy tale creatures. Gaping mouths, huge lips and large, protruding teeth distort the faces of her figures – her imagery teeters between the tragic, the frightening and the absurd. Some of these works express anger, but mostly they express irony, enhanced by her depictions of maniacal laughter and illogical pairings. The ballpoint pen markings enhance these expressions.

After a period of mourning, there was a turning point, in which the artist came to terms with her loss. “Despite having lost so much, there are still things that can make you happy,” she recounts. “And as a Chinese person, the longer I live in Berlin, the more I think about what happiness means, and how to achieve it…I also think a lot about cultural differences and how to bridge the gap between them.”

In 2017, Liu Yuehui started selling her works successfully by participating in art markets. Here, she would be reminded of the time she spent back in China, helping her mother sell fruit on the market. In honour of her mother giving away fruit to children in need, Yuehui also started giving some of her ballpoint pen art works as presents to children in Berlin.

When asked how she finds inspiration to create a work of art, Yuehui explains that she often experiences sudden moments of epiphany. In idea can come to her out of the blue, for instance, while taking a shower. During these moments, she would jump out of the shower and sketch whatever just came to her mind before it is lost.

Yuehui’s mentor at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, Max Görner, introduced the artist to black and white drawings. Although many of her recent works are created with colored ballpoint pens, she still makes use of black and white depictions frequently.

More importantly, Max Görner encouraged Liu Yuehui as an artist, commenting on her brave lines and the naturalness in her works. Yuehui sees these characteristics as an expression of her background in the countryside, where she was surrounded by nature.

“Art-making is the freedom to be alone in your own world, and not to be aware of the audience – if there even is one,” she explains. “It is both looking from afar and close up.” Here, she refers to one of her extra large ballpoint pen works, which covers the surface it is mounted on like wallpaper. The work has two identities, depending on how it is shown: Without a body in front of the work , the piece is called Fish. Us. Life. When adding a body to the work, the piece is called Dream and Reality, with the body representing reality, whereas the background depicts a dream.

When looking from afar on this work, the images resemble smooth shapes of goldfish, floating peacefully in a pond. However, when looking closer, the fish become more rough, their shapes blurred by a frenzy of scribbled ballpoint pen lines. They no longer seem free and at ease, but tangled and restless.

Something might seem beautiful from afar, yet when getting closer and familiarising yourself with it, it can become very different –more complicated, less perfect. It is this which Liu Yuehui is especially interested in expressing through her ballpoint pen art.

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