Rye / Qinyue Liu

Rye (Qinyue Liu) is a Calgary-based interdisciplinary digital artist and researcher
originally from China. Since 2025, she has worked primarily in digital illustration
alongside hand-drawn animation, creative coding, 3D media, and artistic
documentation and archiving. She holds a PhD in Museology from the University
of Manchester (UK), where she researched media art preservation, including
artist-led documentation.

Her current practice centres on Red and Blue Birds, a character-based series
that began as a small romance between two recurring bird-like figures, inspired
by her migration experience and a close relationship that took shape after she
relocated to Alberta. Through simple forms, strong colour contrasts, and
everyday visual jokes, the birds record attraction, intimacy, conflict, movement,
and emotional change. As the series developed, the red bird’s own voice
gradually came to the foreground, reflecting tensions between romance and
individuality, with questions of selfhood and independence.

Rye often places these mutable bodies inside oversized lines, grids, routes, and
other structures, where they get stuck, adapt, separate, or break free. Two works
from the series are currently on view in Loud Art Society’s Colours of Healing
group exhibition in Calgary (September 1–26, 2026).