HONGXI LI
27 SEPTEMBER - 26 OCTOBER 2024
heaven green
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Heaven Green is a solo exhibition of new wall-based and sculptural works by Hongxi Li exploring themes of urbanisation, lifestyle and aspiration through the phenomenon of the Chinese off- plan property market.
China’s off-plan property market, where homes are sold prior to completion, took shape in the early 1990s following significant economic reforms that saw a rapidly urbanising China transition from a state-controlled housing system to a more market-oriented one. This led to a rapid expansion of the real estate sector and the boom of off-plan sales in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and then throughout China, with high demand and rising property prices making off-plan purchases an attractive option for investors and homebuyers alike. However, in recent years, China has faced an unprecedented housing crisis brought on by excessive borrowing, speculative investment, and a mismatch between supply and demand. With major developers accumulating debt and the government limiting their ability to borrow, the sector has experienced widespread construction halts and delays, leaving buyers in limbo and swathes of unfinished, uninhabited residential districts littered across the country.
When researching China’s housing crisis, Li became interested in the contemporary idea of home as one sitting at the intersection of sentimental, aspirational and economic value. The off-plan model, in particular, designs and commodifies “lifestyle” as a packaged asset and approved way of life, and, in this, Li identified a powerful allegory for national identity and governmental agency in China. At NEVEN, she re-imagines the gallery as her own off-plan property showroom. Six wall-based render works, developed with architectural firm Baidi Construction Design Ltd. from her hometown of Xiamen, combine elements of fantasy with the real landscape of London’s Bethnal Green to propose a fictive residential district, Heaven Green, for sale. In the images, identical 32-floor high-rise buildings are fronted by a portico and fountain in a pastiche European style, an aesthetic initially favoured in Hong Kong for its Western referentialism and widely mimicked thereafter in mainland China. Li’s fictional district, inserted absurdly into NEVEN’s actual East London location (notably one mile away from Boundary Estate, London’s first council housing estate), creates a visual disjuncture and foregrounds the difference in perceptions towards lifestyle and the idea of “home” between East Asia and the West. The name Heaven Green – which amalgamates the gallery’s and that of the area Bethnal Green – riffs on the Chinese real estate market’s tendency towards arcadian and pastoral names evoking images of harmonious and peaceful living, intended to mitigate concerns about urban life like pollution, overcrowding and noise. Li’s renders are populated by two example residents: her own fictional character, Jolene, and Jolene’s East Asian partner, Russell, whose deadpan expressions satirise the typical showroom archetypes of the happy family living an aspirational lifestyle.
Alongside the renders, Li presents a custom plinth housing five cast concrete sculptures reminiscent of the architectural maquettes shown to prospective buyers in China. Their architectural vernacular is based on that of the early 2000s, the initial boom period of off-plan property sales. Four sculptures emulate 32-storey residential blocks at a 1:150 ratio, while one further sculpture images an unfinished 22-storey building, topped with a clear resin scaffold cap – a spectral, imaginary penthouse, forever stalled in its completion. The aesthetics of incompletion are integral: according to data from Focus News, over 90% of properties sold in China in 2020 were off-plan, yet the completion rate was just 60%. Li’s concrete towers, as well as her render works, draw from images of the country’s ghost towns – entire districts of vacant high-rise buildings, deserted streets, and underutilised infrastructure left as empty concrete husks. In the wall-based works, Li retains typical elements of Chinese architectural renders, but omits decorative and finishing elements such as greenery, glass, and foutain water. Sections of line sketch from initial planning stages sit alongside other elements more formally rendered in concrete – the construction stage. The areas of fully textured 3D model, meanwhile, represent rare instances of “completion”. In many ways, Heaven Green is as real and inhabitable as many off-site properties may ever be.
Through material, technique and motif, Li observes, adopts, and then warps the modes, mechanisms and markers of consumer desire, industry, globalisation and capitalism, exposing at once the power of these systems, their precarity, and their proximity to potential absurdity and collapse. The near-universal ideal of “the home” becomes a cypher for deeper assessments of governmental agency, individual autonomy, and cultural identity, while also speaking to the enduring appeal of a lifestyle by design, one we’re told might be harmonious, peaceful, ideal, and for sale.
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HONGXI LI (b. 1996, Xiamen, China) explores the confluence of corporate influence, power dynamics, and emotional discomfort through sculpture and performance. Her work compounds capitalist critique with humour—manifested through instances of inefficiency, repetition and failure —to examine the experience of individuality within broader social and economic systems. This inquiry is fuelled by her dual perspective as an East Asian woman living in the West, her Chinese identity and migrant experience both contributing to an interest in “in-betweenness.”
Across metalwork, woodwork, casting and upholstery, Li’s sculptural works blend industrial techniques with contemporary minimalism in objects that resemble everyday, mass-produced consumer items, inviting viewers to reassess the familiar and consider how design has historically reflected societal change. In her performances, Li embodies Jolene, a character dressed in corporate attire and formal hairstyle. Jolene’s non-specific yet professional uniform sees the character embody various positions of authority across Li’s live works, with Li seeking to embody and in turn satirise the institutions of power that her sculptural work seeks to question.
Li has been the subject of solo shows at Harlesden High Street, London (2022) and V.O Curations, London (2022), both curated by Martin Mayorga and Vanessa Murrell, and has been included in group presentations at Hybrid Art Fair, Madrid (2023); 9 French Place, London (2023); Kupfer Project, London, curated by Laurie Barron, Isabel Davies and Isabel Walter (2023); The Residency Gallery, London (2022); Generation and Display, London (2022); Kant Garage, Berlin (2022); Lecce Art Week, Lecce (2022); M50 Innovation Plus Art-space, Shanghai (2019); DATEAGLE ART, Online (2019); Tate Modern (Tate Exchange), London (2018) amongst others. She was the receipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship at London’s Royal College of Art in 2023 and graduated from the MA Sculpture programme in 2024. She lives and works in London.
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