Protfolio

Portia Yuran Li

Portia Yuran Li’s works are inspired by artefacts, religious myths, and intimate relationships. She constantly responds to the dual enmity and interdependence of human and machine, the collision of nature and technology, and the porous boundary between reality and myth. Portia sees herself as a prophet or psychic that her sculptures and performance generate a closed-loop narrative that focuses on bringing up the sensation feeling of the viewers.

Graduated from Goldsmiths Fine Arts in 2019, she is based in London. She has curated and organised body workshops and performances at the Old Operating Theatre Museum in London, the London School of Economics and Political Science Saw Swee Hock Student Centre and the Shijiazhuang Wanying Art Centre. Part of her works has been exhibited in London, Trenton and Shanghai.

PERFORMANCE

Bearing Balance

2019

Performance

The archives of the work include stones taken from the Hukou Waterfall of the Yellow River and the riverbanks of the Thames River, a 2.5-meters red wooden pipe, and images of performance records.

Click here for more details

There Exists Neither This Shore Nor the Other

2019

is a 15 minutes performance based on historical facts, mythology and imagination, that the context is around a fictional story 'Nibiru'. The investigation into how humans sense the world around them has gone further as a tribute to ancient Sumerian belief and mythology of Nibiru, a planet whose existence remains contested among the astronomical field. Like the Sumerian tablets that recorded civilizations brought in by alien spacecraft， the work has a non-linear discussion about the earth. When time is shuttling back and forth in the past, present and future, and human activities seem to be developing rapidly, but they are closely intertwined, can we imagine: When we come back to earth as a young planet, as a new species, as we come out of our caves not that long ago, how do we inhabiting in this planet?

Click here for more details