Jingyi Li’s practice unfolds through an intimate engagement with material, where lace becomes both medium and metaphor for the articulation of female desire. The artist creates delicate, intricately patterned forms that reframe everyday objects through a distinctly personal and gendered lens.

In ‘The Hidden Drawer’ series, Li reimagines vintage cutlery by turning it into finely rendered lace sculptures, housed within antique presentation boxes. Objects typically associated with domestic ritual are subtly reconfigured, their familiarity giving way to a quiet sensual charge. Through this shift, Li reveals the latent intimacy embedded within the everyday, proposing an alternative way of perceiving desire - one that is instinctive, subjective, delicate.

The enclosing boxes play a crucial conceptual role. Sourced from antique markets, often separated from their original contents, they carry traces of past lives - histories of use, absence, and preservation. Li’s intervention both completes and unsettles these narratives. By “filling” them with her lace forms, the artist restores a sense of purpose while invoking concealment: desire as something hidden, contained, and carefully managed. This gesture speaks directly to the artist’s upbringing in China, where open discussions of female sexuality remain deeply taboo, and expressions of women’s eroticism are frequently suppressed or rendered invisible. Within this context, the drawer becomes not only a physical container, but also a symbolic one - reflecting the social structures that confine and regulate female intimacy.

Lace itself is central to Li’s exploration. Historically associated with femininity and domestic labour, it carries a transnational lineage shaped by generations of women. Li’s process - initially self-taught and later informed by traditional techniques - becomes a form of embodied research, connecting her to these dispersed histories. The interlacing of threads, fragile in isolation yet resilient as a whole, mirrors the quiet strength embedded within these practices. In Li’s work, lace operates simultaneously as a visual language and a vessel for lived experience, collapsing boundaries between the personal and the collective.

Across her practice, Li approaches objects as entities with their own presence and histories. Her process is careful and considered, allowing new narratives to emerge without erasing what came before. Through this materially sensitive approach, Jingyi Li constructs a nuanced exploration of intimacy - one that quietly yet insistently challenges the cultural boundaries imposed on female desire.