Shuang Li: I'm Not

Li’s work explores how language, relationships and identities are formed and mediated through screens and the internet. 

Growing up in a small town in Southeast China, Li became (and remains) an ardent fan of My Chemical Romance, a band that introduced the possibility of subcultural belonging as well as the  the English language into the artist’s life.

MCR fandom unfolds as a case study in the exhibition for an examination of distant bodies and displaced desires.

Coming of age during the market economy reform of the 1990s and the rapid development of real estate concurrent with the urbanization of China in the 2000s, Li witnessed the growing and bursting of the country’s real estate bubble.

The gleaming towers, seemingly erected overnight, promised a future that never arrived. Left half-built and deserted when the market crumbled, their skeletons stand here as abstracted visions of home.

Embedded in one building, Déjà Vu (2022) is a silent video, composed of documentation from a performance Li made during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she was kept from entering her home country for three years due to travel restrictions.

The featured performance, Lord of the Flies (2022), was a result of Li’s not being able to attend her own opening in Shanghai due to her displacement. Outfitted as Shuang Li clones, 20 performers were locally trained to be her avatars.

Fandom thrives on distance, as the chasm between an idol and its devotee enacts both yearning and creative fantasy.

For the newly commissioned video I’m Not (2024), Li rewrote the lyrics to the My Chemical Romance song “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” in Mandarin Chinese and English. 

In the resulting music video, a troupe dressed as an army choir conducted by a young girl melodically recites Li’s version of the emo anthem. 

Filtered through bleachers composed of shimmering panels of colored resin, the installation is itself a work of fan art.

On the second floor sits Heart is a Broken Record (2023), a heart-shaped fountain evocative of wishing wells in courtyards and public plazas. 

Found footage is projected from above into its rippling reflection.

Stringing together an endless anticlimax, Li cuts each recording just before the band takes the stage. 

Mapping a personal history across this memoryscape of wants and aspirations, language remains elusive and ever-shifting, as if, like an idol, it can never be truly known.