imagined universes

Mixed Media Illustrations by Li Actuallee

My history as a third culture kid and as a queer artist motivates me to create my own visual and imaginary universes. I am concerned with navigating themes of intimacy, identity and ecology by exploring existing patterns of the world around me. Through subdued colors and descriptive lines, my imaginary universes are equally filled with spontaneity and intricacies.

I find safety in creating alternate realities, where I can heal from past traumas, and bond with the land I create on. Through my drawings I share visions of futures with willing eyes, allowing it to evolve in my mind, finding space for reinterpretation. This imagining is not a rejection of old, but rather a re-envisioning of ancestral wisdom through a contemporary and intersectional viewpoint. As Adrienne Maree Brown says when talking about the infamous Octavia E. Butler’s work: “Science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. I suspect that is what many of you are up to, practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world.”

What are the vast ideologies and ethics that will guide these imaginings? How can envisioning bring these better futures into existence?

Through repetition of motifs and patterns, I honor folk traditions as well as my own spiritual journey, as my practice is seeped in deep meditation during the process of creation. The works are modes of regeneration for both the viewer and myself. My process allows me to tackle my identity on my own terms, while simultaneously giving me permission to escape from the weight and confines of these labels. The obsessive repetition of patterns facilitates redefinition and rediscovery of the same form. In addition to mixed media drawings and paintings, my strive toward interdisciplinary practices compels me to dabble in sculpture, performance, video, and more recently animation and augmented reality. Informed by art practices of artists like Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, and Julie Mehretu, I display my work in galleries and public spaces via installations and murals.

Tags

Related Pieces

editor's note

Volume 09

clay | chlorophyll | crimson

Grass is green where you water it. LC’s words float along over Misch’s guitar. It’s a phrase that feels so obvious, and I’m sure those who tend to gardens know this more than most, but it seems to land more than before. The impact noticeable, memorable, echoing through my being. Perhaps we’re ingrained to think it’s greener elsewhere. This patch is the problem and not whether we’re watering it. The key is in the watering. How we go about this practice is what defines our patch of grass. No matter where we go, our patch is, perhaps, the same. Some attributes and characteristics have been changed but the essence is the same: Us.

Stepping into Volume 09 of imprint, marks our third year. I am learning that this patch of green that we have been tending to for the last several years will mould, shift, and sculpt. This depends on how we water it and allow it to take its own shape. It has already happened in wonderfully unexpected ways. There is only so much structure or shape we can predetermine. Beyond that, it will absorb what it needs and reject all that is unnecessary. And perhaps, in this practice, we are changed. Our grass is watered as we water that of our writing, our image making, our practice, our magazine.

From light to dark, rigid to supple, new to old, there is so much in between that is bright and vibrant and unexpected. The practice of our magazine has focused on being open to what we receive; being open to deeply listening to what is shared; being open to work taking us to new journeys. This volume, and this year, will be no different. We will continue tending to it as we have done, learning along the way, from past seasons and present ones.

And yet, I know it will be entirely different.
But still.
It will be watered.