DSL Magazine: Issue 6

This issue of modernity – and of post-modernity, since China discovered both at the same time – is also informing the work of Li Ran (b.1986). Li uses performances and videos very freely, being unconstrained by the medium but following liberally his own ideas. Through his ceaseless questioning of the role of the artist, he tries to situate himself with regard to a complex cultural heritage and to his own personal history . Another “the other story” (2013) is an installation inspired by the particular story of his father, a realist painter who was, in his own time, also in search of modernity. In the black and white video accompanying the paintings collected by his father, most of them of the impressionist school, Li represents himself as a classic painter: what does it mean today to be a modern painter and what shall we do with this History of Art which is imposed upon us? He asks: “ Who is at the edge of the world and who is at the centre?” The title refers to the 1989 exhibition entitled “The Other Story: Afro- Asian Artists in Postwar Britain” curated by critic Rasheed Araeen at Hayward Gallery, which pointed to the “absence of non-Western artists in the history of modern art.”