Peipei Li
Peipei Li (b.1996, Shenyang, China) works as a multimedia artist. She earned her BFA in illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design and her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2024. Li had her debut solo installation project, "New Order," at Yiwei Gallery in April 2022. Her paintings have been exhibited at the San Francisco Art Fair and Intersect Palm Springs, and collected by the Sasse Museum of Art.
Peipei Li's art explores the interplay between chaos and human emotions, inspired by traditional Chinese Taoist philosophy which highlights how power and truth emerge from life's chaotic fabric. Her portraits purposefully exclude facial features yet effectively convey identities, emphasizing that emotions stem from within rather than outward appearances. In tandem with her paintings, Li's provocative genital-like dolls confront societal taboos surrounding sex education and norms, stimulating dialogues on gender, sexuality, family planning policies, and reproductive rights.
Artist Statement
In my paintings, I paint a lot of human figures with the missing seven openings (eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth). These figures are inspired by a monster in traditional Chinese Taoist thought, and the name of this monster is “Hundun.” In the “Inner Chapters” of the Taoist book, Zhuangzi, there is a story about Hundun.
Hundun, unlike other beings, lacks the seven openings that are essential for sensory perception and life functions in humans and animals. Hundun’s friends, believing it to be a deficiency, decide to drill these seven holes as seven openings in Hundun. They drill one hole each day；however, on the seventh day, after all the holes are created, Hundun dies.
This story reminds me of the dynamic between a family and a newborn child, or society and a newly born human being. As described in the story, a person is born in a state akin to Hundun, without desires or needs. However, society does not accept this otherness. Individuals, in their self-centered cognition, tend to transform this perception into action. This is similar to what Hu nDun's friends did to Hundun by drilling the seven orifices. As society teaches and influences newborns, they gradually conform to societal standards, becoming standardized and homogenized. Just as Hundun died after the orifices were opened, this process leads to the suffocation of one's original, simple nature. The primal "self" gradually fades away, much like Hundun, and the newborns become like everyone else, possessing the seven orifices and meeting societal standards but losing their sense of self. Therefore, every person’s face in my works has some “seven openings” but is still blank. The unpainted, blank space on the human face represents the remaining original heart of the person.
I firmly believe that the most important power of a person comes from his or her own heart. The rules agreed upon in society are like layers of shackles and mud covering the human body. Only when people loosen these constraints can they find their original appearance.
Don't rush to sculpt your “seven openings.”