Shuang Li’s Explorations of Intimacy and Absence

Born in 1990 in rural southeastern China, Shuang Li explores the intimacy and absence that comes with forming an online identity in the 21st century. Her works concern themselves with fandom and community, refracted through various modes of digital communication.

Recently, Li reflected on her connection to the band My Chemical Romance, whose music she discovered through bootleg CDs while growing up in Wuyishan City. This sense of physical and cultural disconnect, being far removed from the band's origins in New Jersey, is a recurring theme in her work. In the video piece Déjà Vu, Li explores the difficulties of language-processing and the void created by silence. During the pandemic, she initiated the performance work Lord of the Flies in Shanghai while stranded in Europe, with actors portraying her and reading letters to her friends at the opening.

Presence and absence are constantly lurking in Li’s work, even down to the conceit of fandom itself, forever manifesting as a false sense of closeness to an idol, defined by an unending, unfulfilled fantasy of being near them. We caught up with Li shortly after the opening of her latest group exhibition at Karma International in Zurich. Below, she reflects on everything from her formative years in China to the power of emo pop-punk.