This post was updated Jan. 25 at 7:53 p.m.
From social commentary to personal reflections, Phoebe Li is sculpting her artistic success.
The first-year art student’s work focuses on mixed media elements, most commonly centered around a sculpted piece supplemented with performance art and film. Li said she was drawn to the style of the art form as a means to understand the human experience. By embracing the flexibility and scope of the multimedia platform, she said she strives to make sense of the world through experimentation in her workspace. Li added that her art is ultimately the physical manifestation of her own reflections on society, which she hopes to leave behind. Six of her installations are on display until Feb. 7 at the 4C Gallery in San Gabriel, her first-ever exhibition in Los Angeles County, she said.
“Art is an inseparable part of my identity because I like to recreate my human experience by experimenting (with) different mediums and to make sense of this world,” Li said. “The artwork is just a byproduct of my life, to leave some physical trace about my reflection about my world and my interaction with people.”
Sharon Qu, Li’s high school friend, said Li’s early art journey included traditional oil paintings rather than installations. However, her art has changed significantly, morphing from focusing on the beauty of art to harnessing its social and philosophical power through multisensory elements, Qu added.
One of her pieces, “The Mingled Mind,” hones in on an ongoing conflict with her family concerning her sexuality, Li said. As a bisexual woman in an unaccepting Christian household, Li said she was in a constant state of debate. She said the artwork represents an onslaught of varying thoughts. However, as seen in the sculpture’s wavelike structure, she will always be in the same boat as her family, she said. Though founded on a personal dilemma, Li said the piece’s mental health focus has wider social implications.
“The installation in the middle is like an ocean wave, so I drew inspiration from an old saying in Chinese, ‘We’re in the same boat,’” Li said. “That’s how I … get an idea for my artwork. It’s usually from my own experience, but I love to expand it in a more social range.”
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Expanding on gender as a pervasive concept, Li’s most recent piece, “The Garden of Eden,” uncovers the problems promoted by the gender binary, she said. The installation plays with standardized gender roles, featuring two contrasting images – a red, restrictive, wearable sculpture of a woman representing domestic pressures and a monstrous, gray baby stroller depicting the patriarchal advantages reaped from societal gender roles, Li said.
Li is constantly driven to read and learn beyond the scope of her coursework, Qu said, and this academic passion allows her to communicate her learnings through her art. Li said she feels effective art has a strong academic basis and thus strives to create art informed by education. For instance, her upcoming work focuses on war and a psychological study on the perception of time during such circumstances, she said. In her interactive experience, audiences will be overwhelmed with stimuli to comprehend war’s impact on time, Li added.
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As an international student from China, she said she recognizes how those who live in a peaceful society experience time differently than those in war and thus hopes to spread empathy through her work. Li added that her zest for learning has propelled her to imbibe the sentiment into her art and hopefully bring about the dissemination of political and scientific knowledge to unify audiences.
Li’s academic motivations come to a head because of her drive and initiative to make things work, said professor of sculpture Kelly Wall. From sketching out abstract ideas to sourcing materials within days, Li’s self-motivation allows her to explore and physically manifest several pieces in the short quarter period, Wall said. Furthermore, Wall added that Li is especially talented in understanding perspectives – pairing her own perceptions of her pieces and those of outside spectators to ensure that her artwork conveys her vision.
When it comes to the specific meaning behind her work, Li said she hones in on the unbounded capacity of negative space that onlookers can fill with their own interpretations. Moreover, the intentional lack of explanation of her pieces encourages unrestricted thinking, curiosity and questioning, Li said. Instead of simply reflecting social issues, Li said she seeks to instigate a transformation in society.
“It’s easy for us to just pick one topic and just represent it through art, but I can change nothing if I just represent it,” Li said. “I want to make something that my audience can interact with, … and maybe, through this way, I can let my audience have some new ideas and change their consciousness.”
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