Dylan Li

I work across performance, image-making, film, video, and installation to think about how images translate bodies over time. The body shifts between figure, surface, and site, extending beyond the human form. It appears not only as a figure, but also as landscape, image, and interface. Images accumulate, translate, and redistribute what passes through them, leaving the body altered in the process.

Across my work, image-making unfolds through a series of gestures that register, repeat, and shift over time. Marks accumulate and disperse, at times clarifying a form, at times dissolving it. In some works, these marks sit directly on the surface of the image; in others, they are distributed across structures or intervals. What appears to hold the body in place can also redirect it, fragment it, or render it partial. These movements do not resolve into stable images. Instead, they produce conditions in which the body remains contingent - circulating across surfaces, interrupted by structures, and subject to forms of attention that do not fully return it to itself.

The image moves across materials, scales, and durations, carrying traces of prior forms while introducing new distortions. In certain moments, the body is extended through reflection or projection; in others, it is delayed, isolated, or partially withheld. What is retained is inseparable from what is lost, and visibility does not ensure coherence. The body emerges through these shifts, but never fully consolidates into a stable presence.