Sandcastle is a 30-minute live performance and installation that examines land possession, ecological erasure, and the aesthetics of imposed order through the artist’s fictional persona Jolene — an East Asian woman in restrained, grey attire. Set within a child-scaled wrought-iron garden gate — too small for adult entry — the installation draws from British symbols of territorial control and colonial landscaping, reimagined within the Finnish context.

Inside the gated plot lies a patch of moss-covered soil, evoking Finland’s cultural relationship to shared land, slowness, and ecological continuity. Within this space, Jolene performs a quiet yet unsettling ritual: kneeling in the soil, stripping away moss, and pressing earth into moulds to form miniature mass-residential buildings. The gesture simultaneously recalls childhood beach play and the silent violence of standardisation and extraction.

By mimicking innocence while enacting disruption, Sandcastle stages a symbolic intrusion. The work interrogates how dominant structures shape land, behaviour, and memory, contrasting imposed systems with local values of care, time, and ecological presence.

Biography

Hongxi Li is a London-based artist whose sculptural and performance work examines human behaviour shaped by social conditions, with a focus on post-communist and Sino-capitalist frameworks. Her practice interrogates how power structures, territorial control, and systemic ideologies shape the emotional and physical body.

Li deconstructs and re-narrates ready-made forms — from furniture to architectural elements — rebelling against, co-opting, or exposing the systems she critiques. Her sculptures act as material propositions of structural critique, while her performances, often collaborative or channelled through fictional personas, activate these forms through gestures resonant with the legacy of Happenings.

Through repetition, deliberate failure, and emotional discomfort, Li’s work investigates power dynamics embedded in socio-political systems, questioning how control operates through both space and the body.

Li holds a BA from Chelsea College of Arts and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, where she was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship. She also studied Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has been supported by the Arts Council’s DYCP grant (2022) and New Contemporaries (2022), and exhibited internationally in Shanghai, Madrid, Berlin, and Lecce. Solo exhibitions include VO Curations, Harlesden High Street, and Neven Gallery (UK).

https://hongxili.net/