Elvis Li - Artist Statement & Bio

Artist Bio

  Elvis Li is a Chinese-born who had international upbringing, attending school in China the UK, the US, and Canada. He is currently based in Vancouver, BC, who is a third-year full-time student major in Art & Performance Studies and minor in Communications Studies at Simon Fraser University, specializing in art history across both nineteenth and twentieth century and also contemporary; literature and philosophy with an intercultural focus; as well as the boundaries between art and business as both an art critic and an art historian. Elvis’s interest in art deepened during his time spent in the UK and New York, where he had opportunities to visit the regional famous galleries (MOMA, MET, Tate Modern, Tate Britain) and see artists’ iconic paintings from various areas. Returning to Canada, he started to change his previous Communications major into Art & Performance Studies.

Artist Statement

  My decision to being my BA major in Art & Performance Studies as an art critic and an art historian stems largely from the experiences during the time spent in the UK and New York. I began to learn about how artists conveyed their aesthetic visions and emotions via artwork from ancient times to the present, and the profound meaning behind these creations, including the historical background, politics, society, culture, lifestyles, and worldviews. Thus, I became inspired to start my education of this discipline. A work of art can convey numerous messages, reflecting the culture and the time that inspired their creations. In other words, art presents a unique way to explore culture and people, both past and present, and by engaging in further studies related to the history of art. 

  My predisposition for the performance art led me to engage in an interdisciplinary study for the art. I developed a comprehensive understanding of the history of different art forms through the studies of performance art. I appropriated a performance piece which was inspired by Adrian Piper’s Catalysis series to create my own series of intervention performance, and motivated by my process of self-censorship and self-analysis in the era of excessive respect for speed and efficiency also represents impetuousness. I took the idea of performance referencing to Adrian Piper to subvert social norms and elicit a reaction and made it into a short film that documented the interventions and also evoked feelings of banal, normalcy, and the everyday. 

Catalysis Series - Popping Balloons (Inspired by Adrian Piper)

  My work documented three different interventions where my intention was to subtly challenge the activities people are accustomed to seeing every day in public spaces. For one of my performance series, I walked around downtown Vancouver popping balloons and carrying around popped balloons attached to the strings as if they were still inflated, an act you wouldn't expect to see, providing a chance to challenge one's perceptions and perspectives, and made me very aware of the public gaze that I always experience but don't usually take into account. Although my subject areas focus primarily on contemporary western art studies, my professors also introduced us the methods of expression from eastern artists, which helped me to explore the vastness of this complex world and the immense potential within an intercultural focus between western and eastern contexts as a foreigner in Canada. 

Catalysis Series - Popping Balloons (Inspired by Adrian Piper)