During the years he hid his sexuality from his children and village neighbors, Xiyadie would take short-bladed scissors to rice paper and shape unfulfilled dreams.
At first glance, his creations are in line with the traditional animal designs and auspicious symbols that adorn doors and windows in China. But a closer look at the shapes—birds, butterflies and blossoms perched on twisting vines—reveals bodies joined in the vortex of intimacy or separated by brick walls.
The 60-year-old artist, who goes by the pseudonym Xiyadie, was born in a rural village in northern China and creates strange pieces of paper. Paper cutting is a folk tradition dating back to the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220) that 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 hometown of Shanxi was a hub for folk art. in his hometown, paper cuts marked births, weddings and Lunar New Year celebrations. The women of the village passed the craft on to their daughters and daughters-in-law. Xiyadie said he learned this by observing his mother and the village matriarchs.
He cuts mostly freehand, sometimes using indentations he made with his fingernails as outlines, then coloring his creations with green, pink, red, and yellow pigments. He began making homosexual papercuts in the 1980s as he struggled with his closeted sexuality, but for many years he kept these works to himself.
Until 1997, homosexuals in China were at risk of persecution. Homosexuality was not removed from the official list of mental disorders maintained by the Chinese Psychiatric Association until 2001.
“I put the feelings about men that I wasn’t allowed to have into my creations,” she said in a phone interview.
In China, many successful artists have formal training from elite art academies, and the most visible queer artists tend to come from comparatively privileged urban backgrounds, said Mimi Chun, founder and director of Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong. Instead, Xiyadie creates elaborate scenes from his time as a farmer and then as a migrant worker traveling to the Chinese capital.
“It bridges folk art and queerness and builds a dialogue between these two very different worlds,” she added.
The gallery will present more than 30 of his works in the “Xiyadie: Butterfly Dream” show, with an opening reception and artist talk on Saturday. The show continues on Monday and runs until May 11. The tracks connect different chapters in his life, including one of his first sexual encounters.
“Train” (1986) shows Xiyadie locked in an embrace in an escort uniform, the figures legs moving parallel to the tie rods. A green setting surrounds them, as if to emphasize the natural order of his endeavour. a rabbit raises a victorious red flag in celebration.
“Flowers and leaves, sun, moon and birds are all part of my lingua franca – they convey my deepest thoughts,” said Xiyadie.
Xiyadie married a woman at the behest of his family, he said. They had two children and their son was paralyzed by cerebral palsy. For a few years, Xiyadie took care of the children at home while his wife worked in a hospital. Filmmaker Sha Qing documented the family’s struggles in a 2002 documentary, “Wellspring,” years before Xiyadie became known as an artist.
Xiyadie described the early years of his marriage as a travesty from which he could not get out. Towering walls or doors separated his domestic life from his furtive pursuits or fantasies. In Sewn (1999), he is trapped inside a house with a traditional tiled roof. While looking at a photograph of his lover from the train (a recurring figure in his work), he sits on a sword lying on its side and sews his genitals, then pierces the ceiling with the giant sewing needle.
“I kept wanting 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 pay and more artistic opportunities, discovering a vibrant gay community in the process. His family stayed in their hometown, but his son moved to live with him in 2013 for better medical care in the capital.
He began using the city’s cruising grounds as a setting for his work, depicting dance trials and ecstatic orgies in parks.
“Coming to Beijing, I felt like a frozen butterfly flying towards spring,” he said.
It gained a following among queer art collectors in Beijing, and its 2010 debut at the now-closed Beijing LGBT Center led to exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the United States, including a 2023 solo show at the Drawing Center in New York. The nickname he chose after he began exhibiting his art, Xiyadie, translates to “Siberian Butterfly,” referring to the intense cold of his city and the resilience needed to pursue freedom.
“From the beginning I cut butterflies,” he said. “It’s one of my strengths.”
In his work, he often gave wings to himself and his fans. It is also a dream he had kept for his son, who could not walk and died in 2014. In “Hoping” (2000), one of the most poignant pieces depicting his family, his son rises from the edge of a wheelchair, sprouting wings, like a butterfly in transformation.
