Li Hei Di

Tongues of Flare

On View
May 29 – Aug 29, 2025
Hong Kong

Pace is pleased to present Tongues of Flare, an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by Li Hei Di, at its Hong Kong gallery. On view from May 29 to August 29, this presentation marks Li’s first solo show with Pace since they joined the gallery’s program in 2024. Following its run at Pace in Hong Kong, Tongues of Flare will travel to the Pond Society during Shanghai Art Week in the fall.

Born in Shenyang, China in 1997, Li, who currently lives and works in London, is known for their explorations of human embodiment, displacement, and intimacy in luminous paintings that blend abstraction and figuration. In their vibrant, dreamlike canvases—where ghostly, translucent bodies and body parts pulsate in and out of view amid abstract forms and washes of color—Li embeds latent narratives about gender, repressed and fulfilled desire, and emotional fluidity for viewers to uncover and decipher. Primarily a painter, they also work across sculpture and performance, mediums that complement their otherworldly canvases.

Li’s work has figured in recent group exhibitions at the Hepworth Wakefield in the United Kingdom, The Warehouse in Dallas, Le Consortium in Dijon, France, the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, and Marquez Art Projects in Miami, as well as the 2023 X Museum Triennial in Beijing. They are represented in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the High Museum in Atlanta; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio; the Hepworth Wakefield; the Long Museum in Shanghai; and the Yageo Foundation in Taiwan.

The artist’s exhibition at Pace in Hong Kong will spotlight 11 new, never-before-exhibited paintings produced in 2025. Meditating on self-discovery and enactments of physical and spiritual transformation, these works imagine the body as an architecture of energies and feelings—a space where chaos, love, passion, and other phenomena converge and collide. These layered compositions, where spectral figures reveal and obscure themselves at different moments, speak to the complexities of selfhood and the conflicts between our internal selves and forces of the external world.

In this group of paintings, the most vulnerable and diaristic works that Li has created to date, the artist continues to use the natural world—in particular, movements and flows of water—as a metaphor for the evolutionary process of becoming one’s self. Wild abstractions rendered in saturated colors oscillate and undulate across their canvases with an oceanic rhythm, fluctuating with each motion of Li’s brush. As with their past bodies of work, they have also drawn inspiration from various literary sources—including Georges Bataille’s Eroticism: Death and Sensuality, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, and Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby—for their latest paintings. In these books—particularly in The Vegetarian, which tells the story of a woman who becomes increasingly convinced that she is turning into a plant—Li has uncovered new ideas about sexuality, monstrosity, and transfiguration that manifest in their new works. Each painting in this series can be understood as a seed for profound, liberating growth, revealing how change can emerge from the most hidden corners of the self.

A new wood sculpture by the artist will also be on view in the exhibition. Depicting an abstracted body at repose within a cradle-like vessel, this work reflects the state of the physical body and the mind at night during sleep—sinking ever deeper into the shifting, unpredictable world of the unconscious. Presented together in Hong Kong, Li’s paintings and sculpture transport viewers to a realm where the boundaries between life and death, beauty and struggle, and imagination and reality are collapsed.

Films

Across the River: Li Hei Di’s Painted Explorations of Selfhood

A lyrical new text that Li Hei Di has written for their show accompanies this footage of the artist at work on new paintings, offering a glimpse of their process and inspirations. “I think about the experience of crossing a river,” Li writes. “I imagine most people want to swim quickly to the other side, but I find myself paddling in the middle, pulled and stretched by both fear and euphoria.”

Gapes at the vanity of toil by Li Hei Di — Detail of Li Hei Di, *Gapes at the vanity of toil (把肉身里的白压住厌倦这人生粉扬的事态)*, 2025 © Li Hei Di

One night on a walk, she pointed toward the naked legs of a eucalyptus tree and said, “I keep thinking about that theory from The Vegetarian—that trees are actually growing upside down. Do you see that? Like, they’re grabbing and eating nutrients from underground with their hands. And then they’re exposing their genitals up in the air—their hermaphroditic genitals, touching and brushing against one another.”

I close my eyes. I think about the experience of crossing a river. I imagine most people want to swim quickly to the other side, but I find myself paddling in the middle, pulled and stretched by both fear and euphoria. I stay in the river, constantly eyeing the shores, afraid I won’t have the strength to reach either end. I keep paddling, gasping for air—sometimes, in panic, I see parts of my body being swallowed, then spat back out, over and over again.

In fear, I open my eyes. I see shadows of concrete, an urban city built on pure practicality, penetrating through my visions. It makes me question the legitimacy of “me,” the self, and even the legitimacy of this water that holds me, this plot of nature growing vigorously inside my chest.

As I slowly turn transparent, fading in and out, I learn to unfeel the self—to enjoy my view of the shores, watching people laugh, talk, and barbecue on dry land. From afar, I learn to stretch my existence, to feel what it feels like to be in their bodies, to wear their joy as if it were mine.

一天晚上散步时，她指着一棵桉树光秃秃的树干说：“我一直在想《素食者》里的那个理论；就是树其实是倒着长出来的。你看到了吗？它们用手从地下攫取养分，然后把生殖器暴露在空中——雌雄共生的触角，在风中彼此碰触、摩擦。

我闭上眼睛，想起了过河的经历。我想象着，大多数人都希望能迅速游到对岸，而我却发现自己停留在河中央划水，被恐惧与兴奋推搡、拉扯，让我感到无力。我待在河里，眼睛紧盯着岸边，生怕自己没有力气抵达任何一端。

我不停地划水，拼命喘气。有时，在恐慌之中，我仿佛看见自己的身体被河水吞噬，又被吐出，一遍又一遍。

恐惧中，我睁开了眼睛。我看到混凝土的影子，一座纯粹基于实用性而建造的城市，穿透我的视野。让我开始质疑“我”的存在与正当性，甚至质疑这片承载着我的水域的合法性，质疑这片在我胸中蓬勃生长的自然之地。

当我逐渐变得透明，时隐时现，我学会了不再感受自我——只是静静地欣赏岸边的风景，看着人们在陆地上欢笑、交谈、开派对。远远地，我学会了延伸自己的存在，仿佛与他们融为一体，去感受他们的快乐，仿佛那本来就是属于我自己的快乐。

Gapes at the vanity of toil by Hei Di Li

Time roar in my ears like a river by Hei Di Li

Time roar in my ears like a river by Li Hei Di — Detail of Li Hei Di, *Time roar in my ears* *like a river (*时间在我耳窝咆哮如河流), 2025 © Li Hei Di

About the Artist

Li Hei Di lives and works in London. The artist attended a one-year student exchange program in Ohio before studying at Idyllwild Arts in southern California. They received a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, London, in 2020, and an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2022. Their first one-artist exhibition was held at Linseed Projects, Shanghai (2022), followed by Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2023) and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2024).

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