Li Li Ren
Across her practice, Ren negotiates the constantly morphing relationships between objects in space. In her built environments, which expand beyond the physical exhibition space into imagined realms situated between the biologically understood or plausible, and the highly-fantastical, she approximates certain shapes, subjects and environments, while also subverting them through unexpected material applications and abstractions — for example, hard glass cosplaying as soft jelly. In this world-building exercise, the artist often incorporates forms associated with the Anthropocene, the ocean, biology, altered states and maternity, ultimately desiring to queer and elude those connotations to flatten and destabilise humanism through an amplification of the similarities, as well as the strangeness, of human and non-human existence.

Li Li Ren at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 2024
Li Li Ren
To find a way home V, 2023
Bronze, patina and glass
82 x 77 x 65 cm
32 1/4 x 30 1/4 x 25 5/8 in
Variable edition of 3 + 1 AP
Li Li Ren
To find a way home III, 2023
Bronze, patina and glass
103 x 99 x 48 cm
40 1/2 x 39 x 18 7/8 in
Li Li Ren
To find a way home I, 2023
Bronze, patina and glass
63 x 68 x 90 cm
24 3/4 x 26 3/4 x 35 3/8 in
Li Li Ren
To find a way home II, 2023
Bronze and patina
28 x 27 x 22 cm
11 x 10 5/8 x 8 5/8 in
Variable edition of 3 + 1 AP
Li Li Ren
To find a way home IV, 2023
Bronze and patina
151 x 33 x 73 cm
59 1/2 x 13 x 28 3/4 in
Variable edition of 3 + 1 AP
Sonya Derviz, Closer, at Sherbet Green, London, 2023
Li Li Ren
Memento: the scavenger's dream, 2024
Bronze, patina, glass, and rubber plant seeds
16 x 20 x 16.5 cm
6 1/4 x 7 7/8 x 6 1/2 in
Variable edition of 3 + 1 AP
Li Li Ren
Memento: the day is gone, 2024
Bronze, patina, and glass
16 x 20 x 16.5 cm
6 1/4 x 7 7/8 x 6 1/2 in
Variable edition of 3 + 1 AP