About Liu Xiaoyi

Liu Xiaoyi

Liu Xiaoyi is an artist, curator, educator, and cultural strategist based in Singapore. He is the Artistic Director of the theatre collective Emergency Stairs and is widely regarded as one of the leading figures in contemporary experimental theatre and intercultural exchange in Asia.

Over the past two decades, Liu has consistently pushed the boundaries of theatrical form while building long-term, cross-border platforms for independent artists. His work is situated at the intersection of artistic practice and cultural systems, exploring the dynamic relationships between art, society, technology, and education. As a curator and educator, he has launched numerous platforms such as Southernmost, Emergency Camp, The Peripheral Experiment, and Emergency Academy, which have become important hubs for artistic dialogue across Asia.

Liu is the recipient of several major awards, including the “Lee Kuan Yew Gold Medal”, Singapore’s “Young Artist Award”, and Asia Weekly’s “Global Outstanding Young Leader Award”. Since 2023, he has been the artist-in-residence at Linjiang New District in Jiangsu, China. In 2024, he was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Singapore, and in 2025 he was invited as Guest Professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen, Germany. 

Theatre Creation and Practice

Since 2001, Liu has been involved in over 80 productions as director, playwright, actor, and dramaturg. His aesthetic blends formal experimentation, poetic composition, and critical thought. He views theatre not merely as performance, but as a site for conceptual and social inquiry. His work has been described as “the most aggressive piece of Singapore political theatre”.

Between 2017 and 2019, Liu created the Postdramatic Series at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, deconstructing audience-performer relationships through text, space, and liveness. His controversial work Journey to Nowhere (2018) directly critiqued Singapore’s national cultural policy white paper, provoking public and institutional debate. His ongoing series Einstein in the Carpark (2018) explores the relationship between science and art, and led to a broader inquiry into AI-generated performance, positioning him as one of the region’s early experimenters in human–machine co-creation.

Curatorial and Cultural Architecture

Liu approaches curation as a political and infrastructural act: a way to organize knowledge, activate space, and prototype future cultural infrastructures. Since 2017, his Southernmost project has brought together leading artists across Asia to engage in transnational and transcultural dialogue.

In 2024, he initiated The Peripheral Experiment, a gathering of independent artists focused on tactical exchange, radical presentation formats, and micro-institutional critique. That same year, he launched Emergency Camp, a new platform for young artists to explore embodied research and interdisciplinary practice across language, geography, and form.

Research and Education

As a critic and educator, Liu lectures regularly at NAFA and other institutions. In 2025, he was invited as Guest Professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen.

He is the founder of Re-Viewers (2014), Singapore’s first Chinese-language theatre criticism platform, and has published widely on Asian cultural policy, intercultural dramaturgy, and independent networks. In 2019, he conducted field research across six Southeast Asian countries, producing a strategic report advocating for decentralized models of cultural exchange.

His concept of “self-institutionalization”—the idea that artists can invent alternative modes of organizing, supporting, and governing themselves—led to the founding of the Emergency Academy in 2020, an international platform for emerging cultural leaders across Asia. The Academy now connects 40 artists from 14 cities through peer-led labs, online residencies, and mentorship. 

Global Presence and Vision

Liu’s work has been presented or commissioned in Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Yokohama, Yogyakarta, Bali, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Zurich, London, Brussels, Toronto, and Gießen. He has also served as curator, speaker, or advisor at SummerWorks (Toronto), Tokyo Festival Farm, the Contemporary Asian Performing Arts Festival (Germany), the Shekou Theatre Festival (Shenzhen), among others. 

Liu envisions building a decentralized, Asia-based artistic network—one that is not only translocal but also transformative, capable of shaping policy, cultivating talent, and reimagining how culture is made and sustained. At the borders of institutions and the peripheries of systems, he continues to act as a connector, provocateur, and designer of cultural possibility.