Tomorrow was Archived: Designs by Alain Paul, Artworks by Liu Shuwei
2025 LVMH Prize finalist Alain Paul teams up with Shanghai-based visual artist and Fashion Photographer Liu Shuwei, to explore time and emotion through illuminated lightbox installations, marrying Paul’s dance-inspired tailoring with Liu’s mastery of light and shadow.
Artworks: Tomorrow was Archived
Artist Liu Shuwei and Designer Alain Paul, two visionary creators from East and West, embark on a profound exploration of the theme “Tomorrow was _______” through their uniquely personal perspectives. The echoes of a future yet to unfold resonate with palpable energy—intertwining with breath and poetry, almost tangible—reminding us tomorrow already resides within us.
“Clothing, akin to the architecture that embraces our bodies, becomes a vessel, inviting us to inhabit its space. Perhaps, within folds, seams, and creases, fragments of memory are caught and held. After all, everything in the universe exists within a vast, ongoing exposure, where the emergence of photographic images mirrors the belated arrival of starlight.”
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Tomorrow was Archived. In Liu Shuwei’s imagined archives of tomorrow, images and diverse materials weave together, evolving into sculptures and installations. He investigates multiple ways of revisiting memory—whether layered, overlapping, or unfolding. “Time is anything but linear; why not seek a broader simultaneity? Reflections in the air shimmer with an invitation, a turn of the street opening onto another city, one shoreline linked to another, a peeling surface opening onto a world veiled in translucent mesh.” Within this tapestry, several of Shuwei’s works engage in a profound dialogue with Alain Paul’s signature materials, creating layered resonances and new connections.
Tomorrow was now.
Designer Alain Paul and Artist Liu Shuwei
Alain Paul’s journey has been shaped by a rich blend of cultural and creative influences. In 1997, his family relocated from Hong Kong, where Paul was born, back to France, and a year later, he enrolled in the prestigious Opéra École Nationale Supérieure de Danse de Marseille, now home to the renowned (La) Horde company. Immersed in the discipline and rigour of contemporary ballet, he cultivated a profound understanding of movement and artistry. At 18, he turned to fashion to seek a new creative direction. Paul is the Special Prize winner at the prestigious 2025 ANDAM Fashion Awards and the finalist of the 2025 LVMH Prize.
Now living and working in Shanghai, Liu Shuwei uses the medium of photography and moving images as the core of his practice, allowing them to expand into diverse material and installation-based forms. Through carefully constructed narrative frameworks and perceptual rhythms, he explores how the experience of time can be extended—or even altered—through the act of viewing. In recent years, he has held multiple solo exhibitions, including Vanishing Act (Maison Ming, Hong Kong, 2025), Tides, yes, breathing (Festival Photo Saint-Germain, Paris, 2024).
