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Xiyadie is a self-named, self-taught 60-year-old artist born in a farming village in a province of Northwest China.
The pseudonymity he saysxiyadiemeans Siberian butterfly is necessary because of the difficulty of being gay in China.
For more than four decades, Xiyadie has worked as a farmer and migrant worker.
He has lived a bifurcated life; he is married and a father, but separated from his wife.
His medium is the ancient Chinese craft of paper-cutting.
Xiyadie creates very large, complex scenes of gay male love.
Within Xiyadies bursts of brightly colored paper, we spy lovers having sex.
Figures are seen behind walls, sneaking around.
This is an immense world of nighttime love and daytime rendezvous.
InGate, a figure representing Xiyadie performs oral sex on a man outside his home.
Inside, his wife cradles a child.
Xiyadie says he felt such shame and repression that he sought help to stop being gay.
This is part of the overwhelming madness of his work.
Blood spurts from his penis in all directions as it loops into a kind of ectoplasmic protective canopy.
Elsewhere, we see men performing fellatio on one another, having sex in groups, dancing.
Sometimes these figures become trees or plants, turning into human gardens, transforming into mythical beings.
InWall,a figure places his erect penis against a brick wall.
Separated from him, on the other side, is a kneeling figure.
Yet there is danger everywhere.
The actual station was a clandestine place for gay men to meet and have sex.
Xiyadies colors are vivid pink, turquoise, cellophane yellow.
He uses food dyes brushed onto paper.
Chroma intensifies, spreads, and dissipates in aural mists and fractal patterns.
The figures are like shadow puppets, blending into shallow, meticulously choreographed spaces.
This is consummate skill and craft transformed into confession.
The largest and most recent work isKaiyang,from 2021.
All are in a Beijing bathhouse.
Only after moving to Beijing, Xiyadie says, did I realize that there were so many of us.
This is my stage.
With a smattering of exhibitions like this one, the world is finally starting to see it.
