Yifan Li 李宜繁

A part of a forest clearing in this world

Yifan Li (Wuhan, China, b. 1996) has a particular interest as an artist in the exploration of space and materials. It is Yifan Li's interest to think about and express the state of society and humanity in terms of materials from his perspective.

Starting from observation and interacting with different daily materials, Yifan Li have sensed the diverse "displaying" methods spawned by mixed media in different industries and aspired to further Yifan Li’s exploration in future art practices. Having focused more on those behaviors that are subconsciously ignored in daily life, Yifan Li collected these social behaviors in the overlapping space and undertake the preliminary practice of the exploration and meaning revesting of materials in the overlapping space through recording, practicing, and interviewing. With concentrating thinking, Yifan Li invest in more developmental and critical creative practices. Therefore, Yifan Li is able to look at the sincerity of social problems caused by neglected daily behaviors as both a participant and a bystander.

Yifan Li have attached greater importance to mix media. As Yifan Li believe, there is not any "boundary" in the use of materials but only the possibility of "controlling". It is Yifan Li’s original intention to make the participants think about the sincerity of life for a moment in the high-intensity interaction.

Yifan Li have established the studio with Yifan Li’s partner Ningyue Qian, Fányuàn, an art collaborative studio. In their subsequent education and art practices, they will concentrate on the social phenomena reflected behind the neglected behaviors in private or public spaces, and spare no effort to grasp the latest technologies to support the creation of more sincere works to explore more hidden possibilities between people and society.

Any whole may be part of a larger whole, or at least any whole is in the process of opening up to the future.

Yifan Li is more concerned with Post-humanism. The idea is to go back to the original experience of life in the world, to the part of us that we feel as human beings in this world. For Yifan Li, this is a return to the original point of the word 'survival'. We are thrown into the world by history, and therefore naturally have no roots and many uncertainties, and the process is presented as - "knowing", "feeling being", " to be ", "in the process of being", "doubting being", "being disgusted", "not being ", so Yifan Li will use a scattered perspective way of thinking to build. The book is used to tell the story of Yifan Li's step by step process of transformation of material and thinking. The feelings of survival that cannot be directly told in words are poetically portrayed and woven throughout the book.

Some of Yifan Li's essays:

"Wind touches me and holds me up in that part of this world. Towards a side to throw me to the last or the next wind.

I gradually learned to sway in wind, to stand in wind, alternating my breathing gestures. I am willing to be held by this wind, I am! Delicately, gently, teasingly, intermittently, casually, violently. There is something more silently than this delicately, something more radical than this violently.

Even everything comes to me, and I become the silent part and also the radical part. What if everything does not come to me? What if everything gets rid of me completely, forgets or even ignores me, leaving me right here? How would this part be like?

Separation from this world is well planned.

I completely abandon those before. I see me in the mirror, I see me on the stage, I see me in the building, all the time, and I can look at me all the time. I notice me in movement, I watch me in waiting, I keep me in rest, I remain me in signals. Yes, I am deeply in love with me. Everything revolves around me as well, and I succeed in separating myself from this world. I succeeded.

Separation from me is well planned.

I abandoned me completely. When forgetting me, the bitter cold wind blows again, and I was filled with gratitude and embraced. The skin began to tear, and the hot blood began to flow, burning the eyes. That world that had been missing for so long became visible again, and the arms opened wider as a result. Calling out, like a lover not seen for years. Blood poured with the wind into sky, ridges, fields. Without the wrapping, the wind digs hard into the chest with echoes of empty valleys. THE WORLD that is connected at this moment, the one that is never far away, that waits in wandering moments for a call. The flesh has long been swallowed up, leaving only the trunk buried deep in the mud. Winds howled and raged to remove every part of me.

Once again, I became that part, that part in the world."

This is not the end, but the beginning of a new world that Yifan Li is trying to build.