Dinu Li

Dinu Li

Born in Hong Kong, China, Dinu Li is an artist living and working in Manchester, UK. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, the 3rd Bucharest Biennale in 2008; The Map: Navigating the Present at Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden; Museumsnacht in St Gallen, Switzerland; Where Memories Take Me at the Petra Rietz Salon, Berlin; Central Asian Project at Space, London and Cornerhouse, Manchester; and Liminal Britain at San Antonio Art Gallery, Texas.

Dinu Li’s practice encompasses film, photography, video installation and performance. Drawing inspiration from archives, world histories, anecdotes, chance encounters and the figments of imagination, Li’s work explores the politics of space and the poetics of time, and is characterised by the interplay between the public and the private, the global and the local, and the personal and the political.

Li has undertaken residencies in Kazakhstan, China, the New Forest, UK and in New York City. He has participated in numerous symposiums including Tate Modern, The British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Li’s work has been reviewed in Portfolio, Next Level, NY Arts Magazine and is featured in Charlotte Cotton’s The Photograph as Contemporary Art (Thames and Hudson). In 2007, Li published a major monograph of his work The Mother of All Journeys (Dewi Lewis Publishing), and was short-listed in the same year for the Contemporary Book Award at the Rencontres d’Arles Awards. He is an ArtSway Associate.

I think that Dinu Li is a very interesting young artist. His work is an inspiration for my final project on Portraits identity and culture. This following series are portraits of illegal immigrants in the north of England. Li guarded their identities by turning the camera to take images of their possessions as a way of conveying their identities.
The portraits are devoid of face, but we as the viewer , visual the people through their possessions.

I personally feel the portraits give a real depth  to the identities of these people and their everyday lives.