This series of works, created this year, started with private images as the initial inspiration but gradually shied toward more public images — ones that have already circulated widely or even faded into obscurity. These include magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, early stereoscopic image cards, museum archival photographs, and more anonymous found images. The work reflects my obsession with and affinity for images and my desire to create connections and intervene in them. The photographs, collages, and found images in this exhibition weave together different spaces to create new narratives and explore the materiality of images. I believe the spaces I create, through archival images and my imagination, establish a connection with myself. Simultaneously, I hope to enable viewers to form their own connections with the space and the images — connections mediated by something distant.
Period Room
About Xi Li
Xi Li is an artist working in photography, video, and installation to examine the process of image-making and the construction of alternative narratives in contemporary media culture. She is drawn to how images shape, circulate, migrate, reproduce, and decay through media, culture, and history. To investigate and reflect on how images influence our perception of the world and ourselves, Li restores images from institutional archives, collective memories, and personal collections. She then reconstructs these images three-dimensionally in the studio, creating works that blur the boundaries between actual and fictive. Li has exhibited internationally at Francois Ghebaly in Los Angeles; Amanita, Sara’s, and Latitude Gallery in New York City; and Madeln Gallery in Shanghai, among others. She is a recipient of the Aperture 2023 Creator Labs Photo Fund. Li earned an undergraduate degree in industrial design from the Pratt Institute and a Master of Fine Arts in photography from Yale University. She lives and works in New York.