Born in Chongqing, 1981, Li Shurui currently lives and works in Beijing and Dali. She received her BFA at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (SFAI) in 2004. The study of “light” and “color” and their cultural connotations constitute the core of Li’s artistic practice. The artist is convinced that the use of “light” and “color” can embody, record, and shape individual’s needs and spirituality in different cultures and times, which is also related to their collective ideology in a broader sense. In recent years, the artist has developed a more comprehensive system of work methods. Distillated from her life experiences, Li explores the boundaries of the painting medium, as well as the functional, social and political nature of light and color through a highly personal approach and its extended practice.

Recent solo exhibitions include: “Artificial Emotions” (Carl Kostyál, London, 2024), “High Light: Splendor Worn Thin in the Recesses of Time” (Long Museum, Shanghai, 2021), “Somewhere Between Abstract and Concrete” (Carl Kostyál, Milan, 2020), “Light Extracts” (Salt Project, Beijing, 2018). Recent group exhibitions include: “Nine Journeys Through Time” (Yuz Museum, Shanghai, 2019), “Spiritual Origin” (Long Museum, Shanghai, 2019), “Nine Journeys Through Time” (Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2018), “A World in a Grain of Sand : Mapping Shapes and Sites for Social Geometries” (Atlantis, Sanya, 2018), “Constellation” (Georgian National Museum Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery, Tbilisi, 2017), “No Man’s Land: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection” (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., 2016), “Turning Point: Contemporary Art in China Since 2000” (Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2016), and “No Longer / Not Yet” (Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2015). Li was awarded the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) 2016 New York Grant Residency Program.