LI SHUANG: If Only The Cloud K
This Exhibition is presented by IDLE Studio
Co-curated by Qiu Yun & Qiao Feifan
June 24-July 8, 2018
SLEEPCENTER, 9 Monroe Street, New York
Opening reception: Sunday, June 24, 6-9 PM
On the snowy Valentine’s Day in 2015, artist Li Shuang wandered around New York City’s
Times Square for six hours, bearing a huge sign that read: “Marry Me For Chinese
Citizenship”. She later printed the slogan on tote bags, with which every carrier becomes a
disseminator, propagating the statement to far corners of the world. Li’s playful yet incisive
gesture questioned issues such as immigration system, identity, and discrimination. This
interactive project marked the beginning of her cross-disciplinary and experimental artistic
practice.
Li Shuang’s first solo exhibition in New York “If Only The Cloud Knows” features the artist’s five
major works created since 2014, including: If Only The Cloud Knows, a multi-media interactive
piece which examines the relationship between digital data and private memory; T, a video
work developed from gender-based observations; Marry Me For Chinese Citizenship, an on-
going social intervention project that probes into the public sphere.
Emerged during the age of Internet and globalization, Li’s works revealed the unvoiced pain
embedded in both personal crisis and collective dilemma. Her practice, while being critical and
provocative, also embodies a sense of poetic spontaneity. Through active observation and
scholarly analysis, Li investigates diverse social subjects such as technical innovation, mass
media, cultural identity, and gender studies. As she relocates frequently around the globe, Li is
able to form a series of multi-perspective yet universal narrative that speaks to the shared
anxieties of the Millennial generation.
The exhibition is in itself a site of public experiment as well—visitors are allowed to access the
artist’s private database, and are given the freedom to alter or delete anything. Through this
immediate participation, we seek to interpret the gravity born by the “cloud”.
