Image: The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
Yongzhen Li has been welcomed to the RBC Emerging Artist Residency Program.
The residency exhibition is scheduled for February 23 through April 18, 2027.
During his residency, Li will create new work exploring how social power structures and cultural heritage affect the formation of personal identity through Chinese ink painting and drawing. The project uses Chinese ink painting and drawing as its expressive medium for examining those forces and their connection to personal identity.
Drawing on motifs from past work, the artist will produce a long, panoramic handscroll using ink and mugwort dye.
He will also develop a 2D animation in collaboration with colleagues from the animation program at Durham College. Combining traditional and contemporary techniques, the storytelling project is inspired by deep connections between the past and present.
Li is an emerging artist based in Oshawa, trained at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts and self-taught in contemporary practices. His work merges traditional Chinese ink and mugwort dye with a modern sensibility to examine identity, memory and resistance. “Art became a way to resist a life that already seemed decided for me,” Li has said.
