Deborah Schamoni

Yong Xiang Li (b. 1991 in Changsha, China) is this year’s prizewinner of the Förderpreis der Kunststiftung Rainer Wild, which has been awarded at the Kunsthalle Mannheim since 2020. His works make use of a wide range of artistic techniques and references to the current times to create multimedia installations. He condenses a queer perspective on social power structures to spatial constellations.

At Kunsthalle Mannheim’s STUDIO, Li presents his work 8 Chairs (Adolescent Fabrications).The work is modular insofar it can be broken down into eight pieces, which can be folded into chairs. The moment one thinks it is a painting, the work reveals itself as a chair; and the moment it seems like a chair, it reveals itself as a painting pointing to the chair as decorative thing. This is in part what the artist calls “utilitarian drag,” an honest piece of auto-theory to describe a clever artistic strategy: masquerading things as functional while rendering them useless. (excerpt by Antenna Space, José B. Segebre)

Last photo: Kunsthalle Mannheim/Maximilian Heckmann