Bringing together sculpture, text, and performance, the exhibition examines memory as a material that changes form over time. Rather than treating memory as something to preserve intact, Joi Li approaches it as something that melts, hardens, repeats, and becomes crystallized through emotional experience.
A central work, My Room (Portable Vanity), transforms a dressing table from the artist’s former New York apartment into a sculptural relic. Once embedded in everyday rituals of touch, presence, and self-fashioning, the object now exists as a fixed record of a life that can no longer be revisited. Elsewhere, If You Love Her, You’ll Love Somebody Else Someday translates private emotion into a permanent image, while the exhibition’s ice sculpture performance stages the tension between holding on and letting go as the work gradually disappears in real time.
Together, these works consider what remains after an experience has ended. Through sculpture, performance, and image-making, You Are a Bright Light, Don’t Lose Yourself for Anything or Anyone reflects on how loss can be transformed into forms that continue to exist beyond their original moment.
Together, these works examine what remains after an experience has ended. Memory in Joi Li’s practice is never static. It melts, hardens, repeats, and takes on new forms. Through sculpture, performance, and image-making, the exhibition considers how loss can be transformed into something that continues to exist, even after its original moment has passed.