Zoe Qi-Jing Li

PhD Candidate

Zoe Li is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in new media art. She investigates the abstract roles of human beings in a technological world, exploring the position of "self" within a system, which might be its cultural and historical heritage, a virtual space, or the physical world. Her goal is to shift perspectives away from normality as well as to raise questions to the public. The viewer is confronted with questions regarding preconceived ideas and the superficial aesthetic we take for granted.

Currently she is a PhD candidate researching creative robotics. She exhibited her project in venues such as Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, Shenzhen Art Museum, Song Art Museum, Beijing, 2022 Beijing Biennial, Wuhan Biennale 2022, Macao International Art Biennale 2023, Latitude Gallery, NYC, and xCoAx 2021, TEI 2024, SIGGRAPH Art Gallery 2024. She was a visiting research fellow at Creative Robotics Lab, UNSW, Sydney, and CAMlab, Harvard University, USA.

I tell the Moon my secret and the Moon tells me yours

Zoe Qi-Jing Li / 2024

robot arm, video, Moon, light-painting photography, interactive installation

The robotic arm repeatedly depicts the waveform of the collected secrets. Only when the Moon appears within its field of view can the waveform of this sentence be successfully captured with a slow shutter speed. That is to say, whether the trace of the waveform can be revealed is determined by the natural environment — only when the Moon is bright and clear in the night sky can this secret possibly be conveyed. The project experiments on the synergic dynamics among uncontrollable natural environments, a precise data-driven robot system and humans, fostering new discourse on their relationships through synergic visual imagery.

Comb Machine: Almost Intimate

Zoe Qi-Jing Li / 2025

robot arm, combs, Vision Pro, performance, interactive installation

Comb Machine: Almost Intimate, continues the exploration of the act of hair combing. Unlike the previous iteration, which focused on power dynamics, this version places greater emphasis on the intimate meaning embedded in the gesture of hair combing. The work invites audience participation: viewers can experience having their hair combed by a robot arm.