Artist Exhibition Reception: Yamin Li

Celebrating the opening of The Central Library's Gallery Exhibit Gnortsmra by Yamin Li. As an immigrant to the US from China, feeling out of place geographically, psychologically and linguistically significantly impacts my way of seeing the world. The displacement of people into a different culture can strengthen our connections to the original culture and show us how deeply it has shaped our ways of thinking. But it also gives us opportunities to question the traditional values we have always held and taken for granted. Through observing my own relationships with my family and friends in these two distant places, I find ways to explore our attachment to and detachment from our family and habitat, and question the role of individualism in family oriented culture. Growing up in Chinese culture and now immersed in American culture, I am always aware of the two contrasting-sometimes conflicting-cultures meeting, blending and colliding within myself. The encounter between adaptation and identity challenges one’s loyalty to past and future. This series of paintings, based on fragments extracted from my daily life with my child, focuses on family dynamics by showing the world through the eyes of a child, or the world of the child through my eyes. I see the beauty and sadness of this world through his eyes, and I use his courage to face the unexplainable. The work contains childlike graffiti, playful shapes, humorous visual language and bright colors. Through these paintings, I hope to start a dialogue with myself as well as a dialogue between myself and the audience.About the Artist Growing up in Suzhou, China, Yamin Li never remotely imagined herself pursuing art. Even in her early 20s, it was for studying Molecular Biology that she came to the US on a student visa and enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin PhD program. But she soon grew apart from studying the effect of alcohol on human brains through science, and instead dedicated herself to studying the influence of culture on the human mind through art. Yamin started the BFA program at the UT-Austin College of Fine Arts in 2012. A group of three students she led won the “Professional Development Travel Initiative (NYC) Award”. She has exhibited in many local Austin venues, including UT’s Visual Arts Center, Women and Their Work Gallery, Co-lab, EAST Austin, People's Gallery and Canvas | ATX Gallery, as well as in Shanghai and Chengdu during her recent two-year stay in China. More Info below.