Li Hei Di
b. 1997, ChinaLi Hei Di is a contemporary artist whose vivid, psychologically charged paintings combine surrealist impulses with symbolic dreamscapes, collapsing the boundaries between figuration and abstraction.
Early Years
Li Hei Di was born in 1993 in Shanxi, China. They studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing before relocating to the United States to pursue a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by an MFA at the Royal College of Art in London. This cross-cultural education informs the artist’s hybrid visual language, in which Western art history and Chinese folklore coalesce. They are currently based in Shanghai, where they continue to expand their practice across painting, installation, and animation.
Artworks
Li Hei Di’s artworks are characterised by a fluid interplay of brushwork, colour, and recurring symbols that evoke both personal mythologies and universal archetypes. Their contemporary art practice is rooted in oil painting but often expands into immersive installations and poetic film-based works.
Inner Worlds
A central concern in Li Hei Di’s painting is the navigation of psychological and bodily interiority. Works like Spinal Island (2021) and My Disappearing Twin (2020) suggest submerged narratives—half-recalled dreams or lingering anxieties—staged within painterly terrains of mutable forms. Their gestural lines contour floating figures and phantasmic organs, which morph and merge across the canvas like thoughts in flux. These paintings offer no fixed interpretation, instead prompting intuitive, somatic responses that mirror the instability and fluidity of inner emotional landscapes.
Symbol and Story
In their 2022 solo exhibition Bat at the Moonlight at Antenna Space, Li developed a painterly language grounded in archetypal imagery. Their canvases teem with hybrid creatures, severed limbs, lunar cycles, and ritualistic poses—symbols that feel at once ancient and invented. Despite their surreal logic, the compositions maintain an internal rhythm, inviting readings akin to folktales or prophetic visions. This symbolic register, layered with translucent washes and vivid contrasts, allows Li to explore transformation, memory, and gendered embodiment within a contemporary art context that resists narrative closure.
Expanded Practice
Li Hei Di extends their visual universe through immersive installations that blend traditional media with sound, light, and animation. In their 2023 project That Day, the Sky Reversed, they enveloped viewers in a multisensory dreamscape composed of projected animations, translucent paintings, and ambient sound. Here, motifs from their canvases reappear in motion—melting, multiplying, vanishing—evoking a state of metamorphosis. These interdisciplinary works do not abandon painting, but rather expand its atmospheric potential, enabling them to stage psychological states in physical space with disorienting intimacy and intensity.
Exhibitions
Li Hei Di has been the subject of both solo exhibition and group exhibitions at important institutions and blue-chip galleries. A selection of important exhibitions are provided below.
Solo Exhibitions
- Tongues of Flare, Pace Gallery, Hong Kong (2025)
- 700 Nights of Winter, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2024)
- Oscillating Womb, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2023)
- Tits at Dawn, LINSEED Projects, Shanghai (2022)
Group Exhibitions
- Abstraction (re)creation - 20 under 40, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2024). Travelled to X Museum, Beijing (2025)
- Wild, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Manila (2024)
- Home Is Where the Haunt Is, X Museum Triennial (2024)
- Considering Female Abstractions, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023)
- Self-Dismiss, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai (2022)
- Watch the Fire from the Shore, LINSEED Projects (2021)
Li Hei Di’s Instagram can be found here.
Critical Reception
Li Hei Di’s contemporary art practice has been featured in leading art publications, including Artnet News, elephant art, and Plaster Magazine.
Li Hei Di FAQs
What medium does Li Hei Di primarily work in?
Li Hei Di primarily works in oil painting, creating richly layered, emotionally resonant artworks that blend figuration and abstraction. While painting remains the core of their practice, they also incorporate animation, sound, and installation into their work, often blurring the boundaries between media. This interdisciplinary approach allows them to construct immersive environments that extend the symbolic and psychological depth of their canvases.
What are the key themes in Li Hei Di’s art?
Li Hei Di’s art explores the inner worlds of the psyche, emotional memory, and myth-making through a personal and poetic visual language. Themes of transformation, fluid identity, and dream logic recur across their artworks, often symbolised by recurring motifs such as moons, limbs, fantastical creatures, and disembodied organs. Drawing from Eastern and Western narrative traditions, their work invites introspection and somatic response, using colour and gesture to evoke sensations that bypass rational interpretation.
Where can I see Li Hei Di’s artwork?
Li Hei Di is represented by Antenna Space in Shanghai and has exhibited widely in China and internationally. Their artworks have been shown at institutions such as OCAT Institute, UCCA Dune, and K11 Art Foundation. Solo exhibitions include Bat at the Moonlight at Antenna Space and In Soft Armor at Tabula Rasa Gallery. Their work is also included in several private and institutional collections.
Ocula | 2025
Works at Pace Gallery
Recently Exhibited
Works Elsewhere
Li Hei Di in Ocula Magazine
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