Li Hei Di
b. 1997, ChinaIn their multidisciplinary practice, Li Hei Di explores repressed desire and sexual identity. Painting forms the backbone of an oeuvre concerned with sensuality and infatuation, although sculpture and performance also play a key role. The eroticism of Chinese literature, music and cinema – including the written works of Mo Yan, Wang Xiao Bo and Yiyun Li – is of crucial significance to the artist’s work, which harnesses an Eastern attitude to sex and attraction, while also looking to Western literary sources, from Maggie Nelson and Virginia Woolf, to Ursula K. Le Guin. Li eschews rigid sexual codes and gender categories in favour of a liberated approach to fantasy and beauty, which exists apart from hierarchical and dominant social structures.
Exploring primal urges, their paintings capture seduction and flirtation in the fluid application of paint on canvas. Organic subject matter becomes abstract, submerged beneath painted veils or membranes. In Li’s painting different worlds co-exist; the dream-like spaces of their canvases are in constant flux, guided by desire and emotion. Multiple layers and perspectives collide and overlap, creating dynamic compositions that offer manifold realities in a single work.
Li Hei Di (b. 1997, Shenyang, China) lives and works in London. They received their MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London, UK, and her BA (Hons) from Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK, and the Maryland Institute College of Art, MD. They are currently presenting Tongues of Flame, a solo exhibition with Pace Gallery, Hong Kong, China, and are also included in Abstraction (re)creation - 20 under 40, travelled to X Museum, Beijing, China from Le Consortium, Dijon, France, and Double Vision: The Rachofsky Collection and the Hartland & Mackie / Labora Collection, The Warehouse, Dallas, TX. In 2024 Li had their first European solo exhibition, 700 Nights of Winter, at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, and was among those selected for Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia. Previous exhibitions includ_e_ Pace Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2025); GRIMM, New York, NY (2024); Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines (2024); Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); X Museum Triennial, Beijing, China, (2023); Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (2023); CICA Vancouver, Canada (2023); Gagosian, Hong Kong (2023); Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2023); and LINSEED Projects, Shanghai, China (2022), amongst others. Collections include Columbus Museum of Art, OH; Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Long Museum, Shanghai, China; Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX; and Yageo Foundation, Taiwan; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, amongst others.
Courtesy Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
Works at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
Works Elsewhere
Li Hei Di in Ocula Magazine
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