Hongxi Li：权力剧场 —— 结构与叙事
的符号重建
Hongxi Li: Theatre of Power — Reconstructing Structure and Narrative through Symbolic Form
的符号重建
Hongxi Li: Theatre of Power — Reconstructing Structure and Narrative through Symbolic Form
Interviewer: Steffi
Date: 05/02/2025
Keywords: social structures / fluidity of power / socio-political systems
Date: 05/02/2025
Keywords: social structures / fluidity of power / socio-political systems
艺术家李鸿玺以雕塑和行为表演的创作，深入探索着人类行为和社会结构的复杂性，她重点关注于集体潜意识、权力的流动性和情绪的不适性（emotional discomfort）的研究。她的作品将资本主义的象征融入其中，运用无效性和重复表现手法中的幽默感来探这些议题。通过艺术实践，艺术家挑战着既定的社会再现模式，促使观众质疑并反思自身的定位以及社会规范对个体生活的影响。最终，艺术家以此来探讨个体在更广阔社会体系中的共同经验。
作为一名生活在西方的东亚女性，艺术家以独特的视角重塑了其创作，将移民经验、东亚女性主体性与西方制度话语置于持续讨论的空间，呈现出多重结构下身份交错的“夹缝感”。为实现艺术家视角下的观念，她探索多种媒介的新技术和材料创作进行雕塑创作，通过金属加工、陶瓷制作和家具装饰中的绗缝工艺，将过时的工业美学与当代极简主义相融合。这种交织创造了一种超越时间性的美学质感。同时艺术家对日常物件（如椅子、桌子）进行重新编码，邀请观者重新感知被标准化遮蔽的日常本质，探索艺术与设计的交汇点，思考设计历史中所反映的社会变迁。
Through sculpture and performance, Hongxi Li investigates the complexities of human behavior and social structures, with particular attention to collective unconsciousness, the fluidity of power, and the affective condition of emotional discomfort. Her practice incorporates symbols of capitalism, employing humor embedded within gestures of inefficacy and repetition to probe systemic contradictions. By unsettling established modes of social representation, Li challenges viewers to reconsider their own positionality and to reflect upon the normative frameworks that shape individual experience. Ultimately, her work foregrounds the shared conditions that bind individuals within broader socio-political systems.
As an East Asian woman living and working in the West, Li reconfigures her artistic language through a situated perspective, placing immigrant experience, East Asian female subjectivity, and Western institutional discourse into sustained dialogue. Her practice articulates a sense of in-betweenness—an awareness of existing within overlapping and often conflicting structural frameworks. To materialize these conceptual concerns, Li engages diverse media and fabrication techniques in her sculptural practice. Through metalwork, ceramics, and quilted upholstery processes associated with furniture-making, she fuses obsolete industrial aesthetics with contemporary minimalism. This synthesis produces a temporally ambiguous visual language that resists historical fixation. By re-encoding everyday objects—chairs, desks, office furniture—she invites viewers to reconsider the standardized environments that structure daily life. In doing so, she probes the intersection between art and design, while reflecting upon the social transformations embedded within the history of modern design itself.
作为一名生活在西方的东亚女性，艺术家以独特的视角重塑了其创作，将移民经验、东亚女性主体性与西方制度话语置于持续讨论的空间，呈现出多重结构下身份交错的“夹缝感”。为实现艺术家视角下的观念，她探索多种媒介的新技术和材料创作进行雕塑创作，通过金属加工、陶瓷制作和家具装饰中的绗缝工艺，将过时的工业美学与当代极简主义相融合。这种交织创造了一种超越时间性的美学质感。同时艺术家对日常物件（如椅子、桌子）进行重新编码，邀请观者重新感知被标准化遮蔽的日常本质，探索艺术与设计的交汇点，思考设计历史中所反映的社会变迁。
Through sculpture and performance, Hongxi Li investigates the complexities of human behavior and social structures, with particular attention to collective unconsciousness, the fluidity of power, and the affective condition of emotional discomfort. Her practice incorporates symbols of capitalism, employing humor embedded within gestures of inefficacy and repetition to probe systemic contradictions. By unsettling established modes of social representation, Li challenges viewers to reconsider their own positionality and to reflect upon the normative frameworks that shape individual experience. Ultimately, her work foregrounds the shared conditions that bind individuals within broader socio-political systems.
As an East Asian woman living and working in the West, Li reconfigures her artistic language through a situated perspective, placing immigrant experience, East Asian female subjectivity, and Western institutional discourse into sustained dialogue. Her practice articulates a sense of in-betweenness—an awareness of existing within overlapping and often conflicting structural frameworks. To materialize these conceptual concerns, Li engages diverse media and fabrication techniques in her sculptural practice. Through metalwork, ceramics, and quilted upholstery processes associated with furniture-making, she fuses obsolete industrial aesthetics with contemporary minimalism. This synthesis produces a temporally ambiguous visual language that resists historical fixation. By re-encoding everyday objects—chairs, desks, office furniture—she invites viewers to reconsider the standardized environments that structure daily life. In doing so, she probes the intersection between art and design, while reflecting upon the social transformations embedded within the history of modern design itself.
Sandcastle, 2024, Photography by Jeremy Hao
A: Welcome to Artisle. Could you introduce yourself and the fictional character “Jolene” that you have created?
H: 我叫李鸿玺，江鸟鸿，玉玺的玺，因为在国外大家都叫我Hongxi Li，好像大家都不太知道我的名字怎么写。Jolene的角色跟我的性格截然不同，她是一个穿着灰色西装、发型严谨得近乎严苛的职业女性。这些细节象征她是生活在社会的系统与阶级里的一个缩影。她非常正式的着装可以让她融入各种职业角色，比如说教师、OL等等。
H: My name is Hongxi Li—“Hong” as in river bird, and “Xi” as in jade seal. Because I live abroad, most people simply call me Hongxi Li, and often do not know how to write my name in Chinese. Jolene, however, is entirely different from my own personality. She is a young professional woman dressed in a grey business suit, with a hairstyle that is meticulously controlled, almost severe. These details signify her as a figure embedded within systems and hierarchies—an embodiment of social structure. Her formal attire allows her to blend seamlessly into various professional roles: a teacher, an office worker, and so forth.
A: 你的早期作品，例如SHAPED是由他人来表演，而到了作品Yes Yes Yes，你虚构出了人物“Jolene”——一位穿着标准职业套装的年轻东亚女性，区别于此前没有固定人设的行为表演。为什么在Yes Yes Yes里出现了Jolene这个角色？
A: In your earlier works, such as SHAPED, performers enacted your ideas. In Yes Yes Yes, however, you introduced the fictional persona “Jolene”—a young East Asian woman dressed in standardized professional attire. Unlike your previous performances without a fixed character, this work centers on a defined persona. Why did Jolene emerge in Yes Yes Yes?
H：Jolene的诞生其实是一个意外。我一直不觉得我是会去表演的人，然后我从一开始也不觉得自己是一个喜欢做行为艺术的人。我早前的作品是和做theatre performance的好友一起编导，然后找舞者表演。直到去年我进入皇艺后，我的第一个作品Yes Yes Yes是我想象有个人体栽在了桌子上，但因制作成本高昂，我决定亲自表演。在这次的经历后，我发现自己去完成行为表演更能精确地传递作品意图，于是Jolene就出现了。
进入皇艺后，我希望突破椅子系列带来的标签化，在不设限的环境中自由创作。一次心理咨询经历，让我尝试与童年的自己对话，直面不愉快的学校记忆。Yes Yes Yes 便源于这种对抗——小时候的自己冲进办公室砸毁一切。至于最后为什么会有个人体倒在桌子上，是小时候的自己在砸办公室的时候所有老师都围观过来，然后小时候的我就冲出去在人群里把数学老师单独拎了出来，然后把ta一遍一遍砸在桌子上，直到ta晕倒为止。砸完之后，她突然很可爱地对我说“That’s it. That’s a wrap.”然后她问我接下来该怎么办，现在的我就说“我觉得我们应该叫个救护车，把老师送走。”
Jolene 作为角色，承载了这种情绪宣泄，但她的形象却是刻意模糊的——我选择了复古职业装，而非具体的教师或职场身份。包括场景中的旧式办公桌，这些带有时代印记的物件具备符号性，就像你看到穿成Jolene这样子的女性，就会想到职业女性、上班族。这些物件沉淀了我们的共同记忆。
H：Jolene’s emergence was, in fact, accidental. I never considered myself someone who would perform, nor did I initially identify as a performance artist. My earlier works were devised collaboratively with friends working in theatre; we directed dancers to perform them. It was only after I entered the Royal College of Art that this shifted. For my first project there, Yes Yes Yes, I imagined a body being repeatedly slammed onto a desk. Due to budget constraints, I decided to perform the piece myself. Through that experience, I realized that embodying the action allowed me to communicate the work’s intention with greater precision. Jolene emerged from this necessity.
Upon entering the RCA, I also wanted to move beyond the “chair series” that had become associated with my practice and to work without imposed limitations. A session of psychotherapy prompted me to confront unresolved memories from childhood, particularly negative experiences related to school. Yes Yes Yes grew out of this confrontation. In the imagined scenario, my childhood self storms into an office and destroys everything. The image of a body collapsing onto a desk derives from a memory of rage: in my mind, teachers gathered to watch, and I pulled my mathematics teacher from the crowd, slamming them against a desk repeatedly until they fainted. Afterward, the teacher suddenly turned to me and said, almost cheerfully, “That’s it. That’s a wrap.” She then asked what we should do next. My present self responded, “I think we should call an ambulance and send the teacher away.”
Jolene, as a constructed persona, channels this emotional release. Yet her identity remains deliberately indeterminate. I chose a retro professional outfit rather than specifying a concrete role such as teacher or corporate worker. Similarly, the old-fashioned office desk within the scene functions symbolically. These objects carry the sediment of collective memory: when one encounters a woman dressed like Jolene, one immediately associates her with professional life and institutional authority. The familiarity of these objects is precisely what gives them their representational force.
Shaped, 2022, Photography (creative) by Paul Phung
Yes Yes Yes, 2023
A: Will Jolene continue to evolve as your works develop?
H：Jolene是一个线性发展的角色，她每出现在我的作品里面，那个作品的内容就变成她的人设的故事。当她的人生故事越来越多的时候，这个角色就会越来越具体。Jolene如果下一次再出现在我的作品里，她的反应可能就会更具象。Jolene一开始出现的时候是2023年，她当时是30，之后她的年龄会逐渐增长。我也有想找一个作家合作，去撰写一些Jolene童年时的碎片化片段，因为我觉得童年经历对一个人的性格特征有很大的影响，让她更加具体。
在与Twist Magazine的合作中，我们参考了 Vogue的“72 Questions”访谈形式，以快节奏的问答方式探讨 Jolene 在工作中的视角。这是她首次在文字层面“发声”，此前，她始终是一个沉默的角色，从未直接表达过自己在项目中的经历。
我们在做这个访谈的时候，在文字编辑上花了很多时间，想通过刻画她的语言去深化这个角色。比如说，一开始Jolene的回答都是非常的礼貌、简短的，然后会稍微有些强迫症的感觉。到后面当你聊到工作的时候，她突然就话变得很多，开始抱怨，开始有点语无伦次、讲话没有条理，慢慢地你就能抓到她讲话的感觉。
H: Yes, Jolene is a character who develops in a linear trajectory. Each time she appears in one of my works, the narrative of that piece becomes part of her personal history. As these stories accumulate, she becomes increasingly specific and layered. If she reappears in future projects, her reactions may become more concrete, shaped by what she has already lived through.
Jolene first emerged in 2023, at the age of thirty. From that point onward, she ages alongside the works. I have also considered collaborating with a writer to compose fragmented scenes from her childhood, because I believe childhood experiences fundamentally shape one’s personality. Developing those early memories would make her more fully realized as a character.
In our collaboration with Twist Magazine, we referenced Vogue’s “72 Questions” format, using a fast-paced Q&A structure to explore Jolene’s perspective on work. This marked the first time she “spoke” in textual form. Previously, she had remained silent—present within the works but never directly articulating her own experience.
We spent considerable time editing the interview text in order to refine her voice. At the beginning, Jolene’s responses are extremely polite and concise, almost compulsively restrained. As the conversation shifts toward work, however, her tone changes: she begins to speak at length, to complain, to lose coherence. Her sentences become less orderly, slightly chaotic. Gradually, her psychological texture becomes legible through language.
JOLENE’S NEW CLOTHES Editorial with Twist Magazine
Photo by Luca Pellegrino
A: In your exhibition Heaven Green at Neven Gallery, you transformed the gallery into a real estate sales office, merging fiction and reality so that a non-existent, unfinished Chinese property development seemingly rose in Bethnal Green, East London. How does this interplay between fiction and reality function within your broader series on real estate development and speculative bubbles?
H: 大家觉得“天堂花园”这个名字怎么样！因为国内的房地产商都喜欢把小区叫作XX花园，“天堂花园”就是把这个名字推到极致，也带有一些讽刺。在展览空间内，我模仿了国内售楼处的布局，包括沙盘和一系列渲染图。整个项目与一家厦门的建筑事务所合作，在设计风格上借鉴了2000年代早期的房产，因为那个年代是期房市场最繁荣、最疯狂的时期，同时也是制度最不完善的阶段。因此，我选择借鉴那个时代的房地产开发模式，作为作品的核心语言。
我的合作伙伴主要服务于房地产开发商，因此，这次合作不仅是对行业体系的探讨，也是一种对行业逻辑的挪用。在整个过程中，我们严格遵循真实的开发流程，建筑师们提出的问题极具现实导向——例如楼盘占地面积、是做综合体还是纯住宅、入口车道数量等，会议氛围宛如一次真正的地产开发讨论，这种沉浸式的创作方式让我得以亲身经历房地产行业的完整运作机制。
H: What do you think of the name “Heaven Green”? In China, property developers often name residential compounds “XX Garden.” By calling it “Heaven Garden,” I pushed this naming convention to an extreme—it carries a certain irony.Within the exhibition space, I replicated the layout of a typical Chinese sales office, including an architectural scale model and a series of rendered promotional images. The entire project was developed in collaboration with an architectural firm based in Xiamen. In terms of design language, we deliberately referenced early 2000s real estate aesthetics—a period when the pre-sale housing market was at its most frenzied and speculative, and when regulatory systems were comparatively underdeveloped. I adopted that historical moment of accelerated expansion and structural looseness as the conceptual core of the work.
My collaborators primarily work with property developers. Thus, the project was not only an inquiry into the industry’s system but also an appropriation of its operational logic. Throughout the process, we strictly followed authentic development procedures. The architects raised highly pragmatic questions: What is the site area? Is it a mixed-use complex or purely residential? How many access roads are required? The meetings resembled genuine property development negotiations. This immersive method of production allowed me to experience, firsthand, the full mechanism of the real estate industry.
By embedding fiction within a meticulously constructed framework of realism, the work stages speculation not merely as theme but as structure. The fictional development in East London becomes a projection surface through which the logics of capital, aspiration, and collapse can be rehearsed—and questioned—within a different geographic and cultural context.
Heaven Green_ Portico view 01, 2024
Heaven Green_ Garden view 01, 2024
Heaven Green_ Aerial view 01, 2024
A: QUANTA is a large-scale sculptural work. You collaborated with a company in China to realize its production. How did this collaborative process shape your approach, and what new considerations did it introduce into your practice?
H: 我一直喜欢与不同领域的专业人士合作，因为我的作品在材料和工艺上跨度极大，许多环节无法单独完成。因此，与专业的工程公司合作带来了更多的可能性，因为他们在技术细节上非常精准。有一个挑战是，我需要在这种工业流水线的各种规定与限制下发挥创造的可能性。
对我而言，还有的挑战是此前从未制作如此大规模的雕塑，因此在许多决策上缺乏经验。我采取了一种直觉性的方式来弥补这一点——在我居住的 Royal Oaks 附近的地铁站，我发现了一座与塔相似的三角形结构，便经常前往观察，以感受这种高度带来的空间体验。此外，我在工作室反复测量塔的尺寸，并尝试攀爬，以直观感受其规模。这种近乎“笨拙”的方法帮助我在现实环境中找到参照物，从而更有把握地确定雕塑的比例与制造细节。
H: I have always enjoyed collaborating with professionals from different fields. My works often span a wide range of materials and fabrication techniques, and many processes cannot be executed independently. Working with a specialized engineering company opened up new possibilities, particularly because of their precision in technical execution. At the same time, one of the challenges was navigating the constraints of industrial production—finding space for creative agency within standardized procedures, regulations, and manufacturing limitations.
Another challenge was the scale. I had never produced a sculpture of this magnitude before, so in many respects I lacked prior experience to rely on when making decisions. To compensate, I adopted a more intuitive, embodied method. Near Royal Oaks, where I was living at the time, I found a triangular architectural structure in a nearby Underground station that resembled a tower. I visited it repeatedly to observe and experience its verticality, trying to understand how height translates into spatial sensation.
In the studio, I continuously measured the dimensions of the tower and even attempted to climb parts of the structure in order to physically register its scale. This almost “clumsy” approach became a way of grounding the work in lived experience. By locating real-world points of reference, I was able to make more confident decisions about proportion, structural balance, and fabrication details.
QUANTA live performance, 2024, Photo by Corey Bartle Sanderson
A: Architecture and design constitute a crucial component of your artistic vocabulary. In QUANTA, the monumental twin-tower structure evokes Soviet monumentalism and the aesthetics of power architecture, while in Sandcastle, the mound-like model recalls the massing logic of Brutalist housing blocks. What significance does your appropriation of these architectural languages—and the ideologies embedded within them—hold in your work?
H: Sandcastle里Jolene堆出来的建筑就是要最模式化的高层住宅楼，特点就是有那种正方形的窗户。我想我就是在那些设计里寻找符号吧。
QUANTA的样子是结合了很多纪念碑的设计，以及展望塔和舞台，它是一个混合体。我认为QUANTA的魅力就在于，Jolene只是一个木偶而已，不管你把谁放在那个塔上面，ta都会成为那个权力的形象。QUANTA的重点不在于塔上的人，而是在于这个塔赋予的权力的象征。
H: In Sandcastle, the building Jolene constructs is meant to resemble the most standardized type of high-rise residential block—defined by repetitive square windows and an almost formulaic façade. I think I am searching for symbols within these designs. These architectural forms are so deeply embedded in our collective memory that they function almost automatically as signs.
The form of QUANTA draws from multiple sources: monumental architecture, observation towers, even theatrical staging structures. It is a hybrid. What fascinates me about QUANTA is that Jolene is essentially a puppet. Whoever you place atop the tower will immediately assume the image of authority. The work is not ultimately about the individual occupying the summit; it is about the symbolic power that the structure itself confers. The tower produces authority. It stages it. It performs it.
SandersonSandcastle, 2024, Photo by Jeremy Hao
A: Flesh marks a new direction in your practice, particularly through your use of ceramics. In this series, the forms—compressed, organic, almost visceral—suggest contamination and corrosion, carrying an inward tension. Do these forms resonate with your internal landscape? What does this new engagement with ceramics mean to you?
H: 我希望尝试不同的材料和工艺，因此在陶瓷创作中采用了泥浆烧铸的方式。为了这个造型的取模，我需要将它拆分成很多个不同的部分，这样的工艺让我觉得很有挑战性，也很不传统。
在制作过程中，我发现陶瓷的制作方式对我而言极具疗愈性——它是少数可以由我独立完成的创作，而不需要协调众多外部合作，这是与我其他的作品截然不同的地方。我在这一系列作品中尝试塑造“被污染的脏器”般的形态，虽然陶瓷和雕塑的媒介与语言风格不同，但它们仍然围绕着我长期以来关注的主题：雕塑更偏向外部环境，而陶瓷的作品更多是在具象的器官的视觉里去呈现内部的心理状态。但是对于这个系列作品，我到现在还没找到一个好的方式把它整合起来，如果大家有什么好的想法欢迎告诉我～
H: I have always wanted to experiment with different materials and fabrication processes, so for this series I adopted slip-casting techniques in ceramics. To produce these forms, I had to divide the molds into numerous separate components. The process felt technically demanding and quite unconventional, which I found stimulating.
What surprised me during production was how therapeutic ceramics felt. It is one of the few mediums I can execute independently, without coordinating with multiple collaborators. That autonomy marks a significant departure from my larger sculptural projects. In this series, I attempted to shape forms that resemble “contaminated organs.” Although ceramics differ materially and formally from my sculptural installations, both continue to orbit the same thematic concerns. My sculptures tend to address external structures—architecture, systems, environments—whereas the ceramic works operate through the visual language of the body’s interior, articulating psychological states through visceral form. That said, I am still searching for a coherent framework to consolidate this series conceptually. If anyone has a compelling way to think about it, I would genuinely welcome the dialogue.
Flesh, 2023
A: After its presentation, QUANTA was dismantled. How did that affect you? How do you think about sustainability in artistic practice, and how might we define the lifespan of a work?
H: QUANTA 是我倾注全身心去完成的作品，同时也是转瞬即逝的存在。从作品搭建到消失，仅仅持续了一周多的时间，这种短暂性让我感触非常深刻。然而，正是这种短暂，使其更贴近我最初的构想——QUANTA 代表着一种权力结构，它的突然出现与猝然消失，更加写实地反映了许多权力结构与政权的迅速交迭与骤然崩塌。
展览结束后，QUANTA 被拆解回收，或许已被重新铸造成城市中的某个扶手或建筑构件。虽然它以物理形式消失，但某种意义上，它仍然存在——我们依然在讨论它，它的概念依然延续。
对我来说，“记录”非常重要。但是有一件记录不下来的事情就是 QUANTA现场表演的感受。它是一个比较奇怪的现场，你看不到太多事情的发生，它只是当下你站在那个塔下面所感受到的被监控的和压迫的氛围。
QUANTA was a work into which I poured myself completely, yet it was also inherently ephemeral. From construction to disappearance, it existed for just over a week. That brevity left a strong impression on me. At the same time, its short lifespan felt conceptually precise. QUANTA embodies a structure of power—its sudden emergence and abrupt removal mirror the rapid formation and collapse of political regimes and authority systems. Its temporality was not incidental; it was integral to the work’s meaning.
After the exhibition, QUANTA was dismantled and recycled. Perhaps its materials have since been recast into a handrail or some architectural component within the city. Although the sculpture vanished in physical terms, it persists in another register. We continue to speak about it; its conceptual framework remains active.
For me, documentation is crucial. Yet there is something that resists documentation entirely: the embodied experience of the live performance beneath the tower. It was a peculiar situation—visually, very little seemed to “happen.” What mattered was the atmosphere: the sensation of standing beneath the structure, feeling surveilled, compressed, subtly overpowered. That affective charge—the tension in the air—cannot be fully archived. Perhaps that is also part of its lifespan: an afterimage carried within those who encountered it.
Photo by Polo Ferrera
A: Your works often convey a strong sense of confinement—from Jolene’s uniformed appearance to the model bowing beneath a distorted chair. They seem to evoke a condition in which individuals are constrained by consumerism, alienated power structures, and systemic contradictions around resources. How do the feelings of restriction and oppression in your work connect to lived reality?
H: 我的作品的呈现是根据概念，概念是核心。我喜欢达到极简的效果，所以每一个细节都有其存在的原因。
至于这些概念上的想法，往往都是在日常中浮现的。如果说得直白一点，创作对我而言更像是一种自然的生理过程，类似于排泄。它并非突然发生，而是长期积累的结果——取决于你昨日的饮食、睡眠、所处的环境，甚至与你上个月、半年前的状态息息相关，就像是把一些已经积累的东西释放出来。
H: Your works often convey a strong sense of confinement—from Jolene’s uniformed appearance to the model bowing beneath a distorted chair. They seem to evoke a condition in which individuals are constrained by consumerism, alienated power structures, and systemic contradictions around resources. How do the feelings of restriction and oppression in your work connect to lived reality?
Workplace, Exhibited: CORP, The Residency Gallery, London, UK, 24th September – 23rd October 2022
A: Do you have any upcoming projects or new directions in your practice?
H：今年夏天我会在柏林的Wehrmuehle (WMM) 美术馆做一个驻地项目，会在那边举办一场行为表演的活动。
H：This summer, I will be undertaking a residency at Wehrmuehle (WMM) in Berlin, where I will also present a live performance as part of the program. The residency will provide an opportunity to further develop my ongoing exploration of power structures and embodied narratives within a new spatial and cultural context.