Creating semi-fictional autobiographical works based on daily life, Li Liao presents a series of real life situations mixed with artistic actions. Through his often allegorical and self-deprecating action strategy, Li Liao takes the initiative to set up or take advantage of a situation to reveal his concern for the real problems that plague society, applying “communal participation” to practicing what he preaches in micro-level social systems and under concrete circumstances. In this process, he also observes and questions the evaluation mechanisms and rules for family production, social production and artistic production and attempts to provide a set of playful strategies to deal with stress, thus evoking a rethinking of experience.

Li Liao (b. 1982, Honghu, Hubei Province, China) currently lives and works in Shenzhen, China. He received his BFA in Oil Painting at Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 2005. Recent solo exhibitions include Li Liao: “Labour”, MANGROVEGALLERY, Shenzhen, China (2023); Li Liao: The Wife Went to Start a Business, Pingshan Art Museum, Shenzhen, China (2023); Anacatesthesia, QiAO SPACE, Shanghai, China (2020); To Be A Better Man, WHITE SPACE BEIJING, Beijing, China (2019); “Art is Vacuum”, WHITE SPACE BEIJING, Beijing, China (2016). Recent group exhibitions include ON | OFF 2021: Carousel of Progress, He Art Museum, Foshan, China (2022); Meditations in an Emergency, UCCA, Beijing, China (2020); Museum, Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) , Frankfurt, Germany (2019); The Street: Where The World Is Made, Mo.Co.Panacée, Montpellier, France; National Museum of the XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy (2018-2019); The D-Tale: Video Art from the Pearl River Delta, Times Art Center Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2018); Performing Dramas, Centre National d’art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2017); Dragon Liver Phoenix Brain, OCAT, Shanghai, China (2016); What About the Art? Contemporary Art from China, Qatar Museums Gallery Al Riwaq, Doha, Qatar (2016); Habits and Customs of ____ Are So Different from Ours That We Visit Them with The Same Sentiment That We Visit Exhibitions, Kadist Art Foundation Paris, Paris, France (2016); The 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Ekaterinburg, Russia (2015); Surround Audience, New Museum, New York, USA (2015). Since 2020, Li Liao transforms himself into an institution and initiate the “Fortune Exhibition of Li’s Family House”, in which Fengshui masters act as curators and guest artists create commissioned works.

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