Among the plethora of artwork on display in Miami over Art Basel, Larry Li's hyper-stylised paintings at Residency Art Gallery stood out.
Immersed in the personal history of Li's Chinese-American experience, his striking exhibition, entitled MIGRATION AMNESIA, offered a sense of nostalgia and trauma.
Featured in Li's presentation was Got some tattoos this year, my momma won't like them (2022), a large-scale acrylic and oil pastel painting depicting a car engulfed by flames. Overlaid with cultural symbols and tattoo-style line drawings, Li's powerful painting interrogates personal and political narratives, from both China and America.
As protests continue across China over COVID-19 restrictions, Li's work particularly resonates. Through family photographs and imagery of Beijing's Tiananmen Square—where student-led protests ended in massacre and military repression in 1989—Li creates fragmented, figurative compositions that are filled with a sense of longing for change.
A recent graduate of Los Angeles' Otis College of Art and Design, Li held solo exhibitions at Another Place Gallery, New York, in February and F2T Gallery, Milan, in July 2022.
