Liu I-Ling | Gearshift (working title)

Liu I-Ling’s Onassis AiR project begins with a comment that has followed her throughout her career: “Dancers are like athletes”. While often said with admiration, the phrase oversimplifies the complexity of dance, both as an art form and a way of thinking. Using this as a point of departure, Liu turns her attention to Athena: a goddess of paradoxes. Associated with wisdom and warfare, justice and punishment, Athena remains a mythological figure whose choices are at once revered and questioned today. Liu is particularly interested in how such narratives continue to shape current perceptions around strength, gender, and representation, especially considering Athena’s strong ties to strategy and physical training.

During her time at Onassis AiR, Liu will explore Athens and Olympia, visiting temples and archives and engaging with scholars of mythology and athletic history. She will learn Greek traditional dances linked to ritual or to Athena and experiment with wrestling – an ancient Olympic sport historically forbidden to women. These embodied experiences, situated between art, sport, and cultural memory, serve as provocations.

Liu adopts an open framework, without setting fixed outcomes. She will focus on observation, dialogue, and physical inquiry. Through field notes, video, and improvisation, she will explore how mythology and movement intersect, allowing questions of gender, competition, and the body to gradually emerge.