From Creative Conviction to Shared Experience

Impressions Art: China’s contemporary art market is currently polarized between resources concentrated among leading artists and mounting pressures on the livelihoods of mid-career artists. How do you think this imbalance affects the diversity of artistic creation? How might a fairer system for evaluating and supporting artists in the market be established?

Fei Li: The concentration of resources in the art market is not unique to this field; it is a structural reality shared by many sectors. For artists, what matters more is finding a distinctive place of their own within that reality.

Returning to art-making itself, diversity becomes especially important when leading artists have already taken familiar approaches to their limits. New work often takes shape gradually through sustained exploration. Truly distinctive works emerge from the forms of self-expression that artists gradually establish for themselves. This is the most vital core of artistic creation.

For mid-career artists, myself included, the most pressing need is for opportunities to enter the art ecosystem, together with support structures—a platform where we can show our work and engage in meaningful exchanges.

For example, ART Nanjing Contemporary Art Fair, which I took part in last October, offered individual artists an excellent opportunity to come into public view. Held at Nanjing Institute of Visual Arts, the exhibition brought artists, students, and visitors together in one space, allowing all kinds of exchanges to arise naturally.

In these conversations, I felt the art students’ enthusiasm for art and their curiosity about my creative path. I also saw their hesitation and uncertainty: many loved art but were unsure whether it was truly a viable path.

I encouraged them to explore forms of expression of their own, and to believe firmly in their ability to discover and create distinctive work. For me, it is precisely exhibitions and support structures like these that connect people at different stages of their careers and make meaningful exchange possible.

Impressions Art: As the tension between globalization and localization intensifies, Chinese contemporary art is often labeled in terms of “Eastern symbols” on the international stage. How do you think artists can move beyond this stereotype and develop an artistic expression that is both culturally rooted and international in outlook?

Fei Li: “Eastern symbols” is not a label we need to make a deliberate effort to shed. Art-making never begins with cultural categories, but with the artist’s own experiences, emotions, and the deep connection gradually formed with materials. At its heart, art can be understood across cultural backgrounds because it touches profound emotions shared by human beings.

Truly powerful artistic expression has an inherent ability to reach across national borders. Whether in music, dance, or painting, what is ultimately conveyed is the most authentic emotion and state of being. Cultural differences are reflected more in the choice of materials and habits of expression, while emotion itself has qualities that we can all perceive and respond to.

In my own work, ink is a natural choice. It carries my personal feelings and is also an important medium for expressing emotion. Through a more abstract approach, I hope the work will cease to refer to specific forms and instead allow viewers to immerse themselves directly in pure feeling.

This emotional experience is fundamentally connected to the resonance found in other painting media. For me, artistic expression that is both culturally rooted and international in outlook does not need to emphasize its geographical identity deliberately. Rather, it preserves the truest feelings within the image through a familiar artistic language. When those feelings are preserved in full, a work can naturally cross cultural and geographical boundaries and be understood and felt by viewers from different backgrounds.

Impressions Art: Contemporary art often finds itself confined to an insular circle, “pleasing only its own insiders,” while the public still regards it as something they “cannot understand.” How do you think artists and art institutions can break down these barriers and bring contemporary art into everyday life?

Fei Li: Many people keep their distance from contemporary art because they feel they “cannot understand it.” But to my mind, this distance does not arise entirely from the works themselves. It has more to do with the public still having too few opportunities to encounter art.

My daughter does not think of herself as someone who “understands art,” and she often says that she “cannot understand” contemporary art. Later, when she helped me organize materials on my work, I began adding a sentence to each piece—not to explain the image, but to record a feeling at a particular moment, an emotion I was experiencing then. It is more like an invitation, allowing viewers to approach the work gradually through their own experiences and feelings, rather than being kept outside by the question of whether they “understand.”

When visiting exhibitions becomes an everyday option—going to an exhibition space with family on the weekend, arranging to see a show with friends, even stopping in only briefly—art is no longer a special object that needs to be “understood,” but an experience of life that can be felt and approached.

I have always believed that art comes from life and rises above it. A work of art distills an artist’s distinctive perceptions of, and perspectives on, life and beauty. The emotions held in that moment naturally become part of the work, finding different resonances in different viewers.

In this process, the atmosphere and pace of viewing shaped together by art institutions, curators, artists, galleries, and exhibition spaces naturally create a field of experience that can be felt. As more people become willing to pause there and encounter the works, the distance between art and its viewers gradually narrows, and contemporary art can truly enter everyday life.

Impressions Art: How do you guard against falling into self-repetition in your work? As your familiar artistic language and approaches mature, how do you deliberately move beyond your comfort zone and bring new vitality to your practice?

Fei Li: Genuine artistic creation must happen in a state of passion and inspiration. If you create merely to complete a task, the process becomes tedious and can all too easily fall into repetition. So I do not see “self-repetition” as something I need to guard against deliberately. When art-making always comes from genuine feeling, copying and repetition naturally do not arise. True art is not simple replication, but a continual exploration of the unknown.

Some works move us precisely because they were born in a particular, authentic moment—the feelings, emotions, and energy of that moment are preserved in full within the image. This is also what makes every work irreplaceable.

If art-making is reduced to “production” in pursuit of quantity, the work loses its soul; creation without a soul is, in essence, repetition. As for whether a maturing artistic language leads into a “comfort zone,” I do not see this as a condition that needs to be deliberately disrupted. Becoming preoccupied with “how to break out” often means one has already strayed from the authenticity of making art.

For me, as long as I continue to experience life genuinely, my work will move forward naturally. It is more like a living vitality that grows of its own accord and keeps flowing.

Impressions Art: Many artists face the challenge of balancing “individual expression” with “public resonance.” Do you think an artist should prioritize fidelity to personal, inner experience, or also take into account a work’s response to public issues? Is there a way to reconcile the two?

Fei Li: Artists need only concentrate on art itself and remain true to their inner experience. If they give too much consideration to outside voices while creating, they can easily lose their original sensitivity of perception. That is no longer a state of pure creation.

Artists do not need to make a deliberate effort to address public issues in their work. Paying too much attention to public expectations, discussion, or judgment weakens the work’s own power. This is not about shutting out outside voices, but about not being held back by them in the moment of creation.

Once art is led by external judgments, its inner energy becomes dispersed. For me, an artist’s most important responsibility is to remain absolutely faithful to their own position, feelings, and inspiration.

The connection between art and the public is better built by critics, curators, galleries, and the media. They serve as bridges between artists and viewers, communicating, interpreting, and expanding the context.

When a work encounters the public within an appropriate context, that in itself is the most natural way to reconcile the two.

Impressions Art: From individual practice to the wider art ecosystem, what do you think is the central issue most urgently facing Chinese contemporary art today? What direction should its future development take?

Fei Li: From individual practice to the wider art ecosystem, one of the central issues Chinese contemporary art urgently needs to address is not a question of scale or rank, but whether artists in the early stages of their practice have opportunities to be seen and spaces in which their work can be presented.

Much artistic work begins at a very personal, early stage, when the artist has not yet entered the institutional system or attracted the attention of the market or the public. Without suitable channels for showing it, this work often struggles to come into public view.

The key issue lies not in art-making itself, but in how artworks can find their way into the art ecosystem.

I would prefer to define the direction of future development as a more open state of affairs—one in which more people encounter art and more people take part. Rather than dwelling on whether people “understand” art, we should let it become something they can feel and approach.

Only when art gradually becomes part of everyday life, creating a lasting and natural atmosphere, will the whole art ecosystem become healthier.

Artists are ordinary people too; they simply have a heightened sensitivity and a distinctive understanding of beauty. Art comes from life: it is a distillation and transformation of lived experience.

When these feelings are expressed, seen, and shared, the relationship between art and the public will continue to grow through this ongoing flow.