exhibition

Traces Under the Surface

Red-River Cultural Art Museum, Beijing, 2023

‘Traces Under the Surface’, RRCAM (Beijing), 2023

stills from the same-titled film (2022), shot by Qiyang Zheng

initial concept, 2022

‘If we did not know before that we share the surfaces of the world, we do now. The surface that one person touches bears the trace of that person, hosts and transfers that trace, and affects the next person whose touch lands there. The surfaces differ. Plastic won’t bear the trace for long, but some porous materials clearly do. Something human and viral lingers briefly or longer on a surface that constitutes one material component of our common world.’

- Judith Butler

exhibition

Entre las Flores

Nigüelas (Granada), Spain, 2022

Fran and I delivered this exhibition of my mother’s paintings in Nigüelas. My mother self-learnt two different techniques of traditional Chinese paintings after her retirement, and what I found beautiful is the space/aura created in her works. As a former Chinese literature teacher, her interpretation of literati paintings seemed to be seamless.

residency

‘A Shifting Model of Publicness’

Metal UK, 2021-2022

How do you make a community space/hub more public and is the notion of 'publicness' shifting in a post-pandemic era? This residency with Metal UK aims to investigate the historical changes of the Edge Hill Station, Liverpool, from one of the oldest passenger railway station to the contemporary centre for communities and artists. The project discusses the changing notion of ‘publicness’ in the aspects of both public transportation (the class system) and urban space (exclusion and privatisation), to reveal a hidden model of top-down (urban) management that has been constantly challenged by local groups/communities in Liverpool.

The residency is followed by a public conversation with guests including Liverpool Art Prize (2012) winner Robyn Woolston, Mark Sidebotham from Shed KM architects, studio artist and volunteer for the regular screening night Film Station Adrian Jeans, and one half of Cinema Nation Monika Rodriguez: ‘A Shifting Model of Publicness’.

See more details at Metal UK.

residency

‘Knowledge is Power’

Tate Liverpool, 2020

When we talk about urban space, whose urban space are we talking about?

Cities are shaped by people. From self-built settlements on the rooftops of Hong Kong to feminist graffiti and flags under bridges, people negotiate with the city produce safe, small territories that belong to specific groups.

It is this process of negotiation between individuals and authorities (both public and commercial) that shapes the everyday urban spaces that we choose to spend time in. Often, these places are made through the reaction and resistance of ordinary people. In this way, power is shifted from the ‘ruler’ to the people, and communities form and become stronger.

Tate: ‘Knowledge is Power’; UoL: ‘Tate Residency’

exhibition

jianghu

LOOK Photo Biennial / Satellite, Liverpool, 10/2019 - 11/2019

From Wong Kai-wai’s classic Ashes of Time to Jia Zhangke’s series portraits of grassroots, ‘jianghu’ has constantly appeared in contemporary Chinese art and literature. Jianghu (‘江湖’), firstly appeared in philosopher Zhuang Zhou’s text, gradually implies the unruled world outside the authoritative order and the domestic space, where people from different backgrounds can live in their own ways without obeying the principle. With this concept, this project tries to understand the ‘bizarre’ practices in contemporary Chinese cities, to explore the underlying philosophy and to rethink the relation among ordinary people, their everyday lives and the top-down power.

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Central, Hong Kong, 2018

research

‘Made in Hong Kong’

University of Cambridge, 2019

“...the city is presented from the angle of the underprivileged, expresses the need for social change, detects problems from an everyday situation, and this kind representation could help us map out a complicated formation of urban culture of Hong Kong”

This paper explores the cinematic representation of the socio-spatial (re)production of publicness in contemporary Hong Kong, through analysing series of Hong Kong city films. I argue that Hong Kong urban cinema has demonstrated a cinematic urban topography of the city and the fluid urban space engendered by everyday practices.

Conference: ‘Slices of Everyday Lives’

exhibition

Gaze

OUTPUT, Liverpool, 2019

Through the three pieces featured in this exhibition, I have tried to explore the concept of representation (of gender, religion, emotion) by using different materials and skills.

‘OUTPUT OPEN is an exhibition that brings together artists and designers all from or based in Merseyside. There isn’t a single neat theme that runs through the show - we have simply enjoyed the practices of these makers and want to showcase the great amount of creative activity that is happening locally. This year’s edition includes work by Claire Holtaway, Nneka Cummins, John Elcock, Zhuozhang Li, Paul Mellor, Gold Akanbi, Grace Edwards, Sumuyya Khader, Josie Jenkins and Sophie Green. We hope you enjoy the show.’ (Review: ‘Output Open 2: Let Quality Speak’)

‘mapplethorpe’s naked lunch’, collage, 2016

research

The Floating City

conference: (Re)defining the Intersection: Hong Kong Textuality,
The University of Sheffield, Humanities Research Institute, 2019

This paper explores the socio-spatial transformation of urban spaces in Hong Kong through analysing a series of contemporary Hong Kong films, and how these films demonstrate a cinematic urban geography and depict the ever-changing transformation of everyday life spaces. I argue that these socio-spatial (re)production of urban spaces reflect and affect the ‘floating’ identity of the people and the city in terms of different aspects, such as physical forms, social structures and psychological comprehensions of the space.

collage art

Gaia, or ‘No War but Gender War’

Liverpool, 2018

we fool ourselves that women came from men’s bone, though we were all born from females’ bodies
we simplify the women and the nature, then, we see them as materials for production

recycled sunset photo print from bin

residency

Now and Then

PlacEd, Liverpool, 2018

This workshop aims to understand the city image of Liverpool from different groups of people (mainly young people). It consists of two parts: the ‘Image of Liverpool’ and the ‘Future of Liverpool’. With asking people to create two collages based upon images/texts from newspapers and magazines, it shows people’s underneath understandings of the city in different layers (physical urban spaces, social everyday life, etc.) and their future scenarios.

a section of the panoramic collage

publication

Till We Have Built Jerusalem: architects of a new city
[直到我们建起了耶路撒冷]

translator, Tang Keyang Studio, 2016-2018

‘The summer is rapidly drawing to a close. The latest round of fighting has ended. More than twenty-one hundred Palestinians and seventy-two Israelis are dead, whole Gazan neighbourhoods lie in rubble, thousands are homeless there, and in Israel the events of the summer have been hastily buried. Life in Jewish Jerusalem has slipped unnervingly back to humdrum routine. In Zion Square, the protesters have vanished and been replaced by gaggles of noisy American Jewish teenagers. Next to the bright yellow bloodmobile with a Magen David painted on its side, a yarmulke- wearing electric guitarist plays “Stairway to Heaven” off-key at all hours of the day. This scene unfolds right across from the row of pinkish Jaffa Road buildings that it seems Spyro Houris built, just outside the window of the office where he once sat and worked—but he remains a ghost.’ (p287)

“这个夏天很快地接近了尾声。最近的一轮殴斗也已结束，超过2100名巴勒斯坦人和72名以色列人死亡，整个加沙社区遍地碎石瓦砾，数千人无家可归。而在以色列，这一夏季的事变已被迅速地忘却，犹太人身心俱疲地在耶路撒冷恢复了平乏的日常生活。锡安广场的示威者们消失散去，取而代之的是成群聒噪的美国犹太青少年。在一辆一侧涂有大卫星的明黄色采血巡回车旁，身戴犹太圆顶小帽的电吉他手一整日都在走调地演奏着《通往天堂的阶梯（Stairway to Heaven）》。这一幕展现在雅法路上那排似乎是斯派罗·扈利斯建造的粉色建筑群前，在他曾坐着并工作的那个办公室的那扇窗外——而他却已成为了一个幽灵。”

Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City (Chinese Edition)’, Beijing United Publishing co., LTD; 1st edition (December 1, 2017)

exhibition

Wandering Through Newspaper

curator, GAFA, Guangzhou, 2017

'My room is situated on the forty-fifth degree of latitude, it forms a long rectangle, thirty-six paces in circumference if you hug the wall. My journey will, however, measure much more than this, as I will be crossing it frequently lengthwise, or else diagonally, without any rule or method.'

media writing

Paris is Burning

Did human firstly create the form of a runway platform, or the semi-circle form of ancient Greek Theatre?

urban design

Somers Town

Urban regeneration project, London, 2015-2016

This project of Somers Town is based on research works in Studio Global Praxis, Sheffield School of Architecture. This community, which is sandwiched between St Pancras International and Euston Stations in London, suffers a fragmented social and spatial condition against its diverse cultural and social backgrounds.

urban study & design

2047

MA Thesis, SSoA, 2016

‘This metropolis is in fact no longer the expression of a society of producers but of consumers.’
‘What is needed is a shift from the passivity in which we comply with what is offered up every day, to an active posture, not so much of resistance, but of a quest.’

media writing

迷影：电影与仪式感

“无论如何哀悼也无法使这种在黑暗的影院中正在消逝的或色情或沉思的仪式苏醒。”

media writing

Creation of Eve

‘The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust.’

research

Along the Qingming River

speaker, LHAP conference, London, 2017

‘If life prevail, the city of the future will have, as but few contemporary cities have, the qualities shown in this Chinese painting… with the endless permutations and combinations that varied landscapes, varied occupations, varied cultural activities, and the varied personal attributes of men make possible. Not the perfect hive, but the living city.’

Visual materials such as paintings, photography, or cinema, could provide abundant and evident resources for us to understand the interaction of city and people in the everyday level, which could be usually, consciously or unconsciously, neglected in official documents and planning maps. In this case, those frozen moments depicted in the three panoramic scrolls have helped us to examine the historical changes of the urban milieu, and also, as you could see, it would be necessary to combine other kinds of materials during the research, including maps, documents, or literature.

landscape design project

Limbo

BEng Thesis, Xi’an, 2014

This landscape design project aimed at representing the historical changes of Han Dynasty, through planning scenarios along with the main tourist route.

exhibition

Investigate It（格物）

curator assistant, OCAT, Shanghai, 03/2016

Through various forms of expression, including architectural models, installations, videos, images, and text, this exhibition carries on a dialogue between the “things” and spaces introduced in the workshop, but taking a more refined and mature approach.

zhuozhang li