Xiao-yang Li

Xiao-yang Li lives and works in London. In her complex and elaborate works she seeks to explore the mythical and the unknown through the process of painting. Most of her paintings are focused on the modes of representation of human bodies dominated by formal analysis of the female figure. Li is particularly fascinated by the statues of antiquity, some prehistoric artefacts and by the process of transformation from the sculptural to the pictorial. Her most recent body of work has evolved around the idea of the ‘primeval female form’. The moment in which the figure (o en sculptural) is transformed into a subject of the paint and of the archetypal is central to Li’s practice. The artist’s goal is to free the subject from the constraints of time; make it timeless. In her decisive and at times violent paintings, Li examines the nature of myths and strives to invent a new one herself.