Xi Li

Latitude Gallery is pleased to present To Put an Image in Front of the Thing, a solo exhibition by Xi Li. Featuring eight new works, including photography and mixed medium work, this exhibition marks the artist's debut solo show in New York. Xi Li presents a compelling new body of work that delves into the tension between archival imagery, memory, and mediated perception.

mage-making, for me, begins with the image-seeking. More than before, the pictures I source often had a pronounced past: a living room from a 1937 decorative magazine, the photographic documentation a floral textile print from the Met, the arrival of a new carnation variety.

The visual fullness, or excess of these pictures often stem from their clearly designated industrial and instructional nature; in other words, the function of image dictates the outcome of the image. I complicate their images’ original functions by scanning, printing, assembling a collaged three-dimensional space. Finally, the camera shutter captures the processes of my decisions and indecisions, forming a new mnemonic image.

In many ways, the new image indexes the mysterious affinities I feel towards the various source images, and questioning the nature of such affinities. Furthermore, I question what exactly is being brought to light. The one thing I am sure about, however, was the fact that any affinity established between myself and images was the result of a certain alienation and distance. The new images, after all, were born out of the absence of memory.

“Vorstellung—to put an image in front of the thing, or to make a representation frommemory”[1]

I think about how the scanner moves in total darkness as the lens “photographs” the source image, yet how a photograph is fundamentally the presence of light:

How to let the lights (old and new) into the new space? How do light and shadow distribute among themselves on the silkscreened surface of fermented images? How can these spaces breathe?

The photographs’ passages through lightness and darkness present an opportunity from me to step out of my own subjectivity and observe myself from an intimate distance.

Xi Li (b. 1995 Suzhou, China) is an artist who works with photography, collage, video, and installation to explore image-making processes and the construction of alternative narratives in contemporary culture. Her work investigates how images shape, circulate, reconstruct, and eventually shift layers of meaning through media, history, and collective memory. Li has exhibited internationally at François Ghebaly @francoisghebaly (Los Angeles), Amanita @amanita.ny , Sara’s, and Latitude Gallery (New York), as well as Madein Gallery @madeingallery (Shanghai), among others. She was awarded the Aperture 2023 Creator Labs Photo Fund @aperturefnd and was an Artist-in-Residence at Silver Art Projects @silverartprojects in 2024. She holds a Bachelor degree in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and an MFA in Photography from Yale School of Art. Li currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

1 - https://www.e-flux.com/journal/73/60460/the-silence-of-the-lens/