Hongxi Li (b. 1996, Xiamen, China) is a London-based Chinese 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 the artist’s East Asian fictional persona Jolene, activate these forms through gestures that draw from the legacy of happenings.

Jolene functions as a recurring character and artistic medium — a figurative vessel who appears across sculpture, performance, and installation. She allows Li to embody and distort societal roles, acting as a mirror to collective pressures and repressed desires. 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, supported by the Vice-Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship. She also studied Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2022, she was selected for New Contemporaries and received the Arts Council’s DYCP grant. She has exhibited internationally in Shanghai, Madrid, Berlin, and Lecce, and held solo exhibitions in the UK at VO Curations, Harlesden High Street, and Neven Gallery. She is currently developing a UK national touring project with Diasporas Now, scheduled to be presented at the V&A Museum in London and Spike Island in 2026.