Joy Li's Dish-Rack Sculptures Turn Domestic Objects into Urban Landscapes
In a recent feature in ArtAsiaPacific, Joy Li's sculptures made from dish racks reimagine common household items as tiny cityscapes. Her 2025 piece, 'Our Ephemeral Eternity. Our Love. Our Ordinary Battlefield,' transforms kitchen brackets into towering skyscrapers. Two small screens—one depicting a napping puppy and the other showing Li stacking mushrooms—resemble LED billboards. A snake plant and a sliced apple add to the mix of natural and artificial elements. Li's works fluctuate between the tangible and the fleeting, as she occasionally constructs a bubble tower from dish soap and transports it on a trolley. This installation allows viewers to engage with the city in a disorienting, personal way, evoking feelings of being both a confused giant and an all-seeing spirit. The profile emphasizes her distinctive sculptural style, blending domesticity with urban themes to address feelings of alienation and the uncanny in metropolitan life.
Key facts
- Joy Li creates dish-rack sculptures that blend domestic and urban elements.
- Her work 'Our Ephemeral Eternity. Our Love. Our Ordinary Battlefield' (2025) features kitchen brackets as miniature skyscrapers.
- Two phone-sized screens in the piece show a sleeping puppy and the artist stacking mushrooms.
- The installation includes a potted snake plant and an apple slice patched with a metal replica.
- Li periodically creates a tower of soap bubbles from dish detergent and wheels it toward the audience on a trolley.
- The work oscillates between solidity and ephemerality, monumental and minute.
- Viewers experience a sense of disembodiment, acquiring perspectives of a bewildered giant and an omniscient ghost.
- The profile is published in ArtAsiaPacific.
Entities
Artists
- Joy Li
Institutions
- ArtAsiaPacific