A trolley. A dining table. A mahjong board. In Jessie Li’s work, everyday objects expand to become investigations into personal memory and family archives. The Chinese-born artist, now based in West Yorkshire, creates participatory, site-specific installations that transform overlooked urban spaces into sites of dialogue. She collaborates with local residents and artists, using interviews and fieldwork to create spaces where marginalised voices can be heard. These are pieces that see silence transformed into story.
Li trained initially in Chinese painting and art history before moving into video installation and interdisciplinary media. She later completed a BA in Digital Media Art at the University of Hertfordshire and Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in China. In January 2025, she received an MA in Situated Practice at Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where her research focuses on spatial practices, community engagement and social constructs through film, installation and performance art. This investigation has developed in her current work as part of the Helsinki International Artist Programme, where Li is particularly interested in how people relate to everyday objects and domestic spaces.
One particularly memorable example is Temporary Tenants (2025), a participatory exhibition in Hebden Bridge. Here, Li transforms an abandoned trolley into a mobile “Free Corner Trading Trolley,” where items left on a street corner become part of a spontaneous recycling scheme. In a review for IOU Creation Centre, Kelly Loughlin writes: “Conversations open up and Li builds relationships with her temporary neighbours…gathering things and the stories attached to them. Li creates her mobile, shopping trolley version of the “free corner” and takes to the streets of Halifax and Hebden Bridge, trading things and stories in areas of exchange, conviviality, marketplaces, shopping districts.” The piece offers a poignant reflection on how seemingly inconspicuous items can hold value for both individuals and communities.
Video installation When We Look into Each Other’s Eyes was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2025. The work reconstructs three specific scenes from Li’s mother’s perspective: a bicycle, the family dining table, and the suitcase she brought with her after marriage. The piece questions how much we really know those closest to us. The artist explains “My mother seeped into the whole of my life, while I never really entered her past life. I seem to be caught in a reality that lies between omniscience and unknowability. She incarnated into two images, the familiar mother in front of me, and the woman sealed by memory.” Here, she joins a long tradition of creatives who examine parental relationships through their work – think of Louise Bourgeois’s Maman, a 30-feet-high sculpture of a spider associated with her own mother, or, more recently, Diana Markosian’s Father, an intimate photographic portrayal of family reconnection.
Across Li’s work, the most familiar objects take on an unexpected resonance. In her hands, a trolley becomes a place of community exchange, a dining table a stage for family history or a suitcase a container of memory. In bringing new resonance to everyday items, Li reveals how the stories that shape us in the most profound and lasting ways are often carried in the things we frequently overlook.
Find out more about the artist: @jessieli_works
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
All images courtesy of Jessie Li.
