Is extinction palatable? In Sweet Price (2023), Shihui Li offers a sugar-painted image of a vanished species, rendered in an edible folk medium. Nutritionists have long claimed that we are what we eat; the questions of what, where and why demand a prolonged exploration.
Chinese sugar painting (糖画, tánghuà, literally “sugar picture”) shapes molten sugar into flat images on a marble or metal slab. The practice dates to the Ming dynasty and survives in Sichuan province, where artists still work it as street theatre at markets and temple fairs (The Beijinger 2025). Crowds watch the making; the result is either eaten or left to dissolve (The Beijinger 2025). Each piece marks both its own construction and the moment of its consumption. That double charge resonates for Li, who carries it across her multidisciplinary practice, using it to explore how we connect with the world that supports us physically and symbolically.
Born in Changsha and now based in London, Li graduated in Interaction Design Arts at the University of the Arts London before completing an MA in Expanded Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London (Li n.d.). Her output so far spans sugar painting, sound art, installation and interactive design, and into each method she reads the material properties and social narratives embedded in everyday objects. In Sweet Price, she draws attention to how human activity pushes animals toward extinction. Every creature she renders in molten sugar exists only briefly, waiting to be eaten or to degrade, then gone. The pieces set cultural tradition, itself eroding, beside images of species already lost, fragments of a vulnerable earth. The poignancy of the works is that we are reminded of what we have lost through the sweetness of consumption.
A companion work, Under the Skin (2023) tattoos floral patterns onto an aubergine, lending the fruit a temporary, body-like, vulnerable surface. Time spoils it. The tattoo, once lovely, warps as organic entropy sets in. Li inscribes the pattern onto the aubergine’s skin, using its slow decay to question the social readings attached to tattoo culture. Skin, whether on fruit or on people, lasts no longer than the body it wraps, yet human skin carries cultural judgement across generations. Li invites us to ask why?
Three concerns organise Li’s practice: the ethics of consumption, material as history, and a cross-cultural dialogue. Together they place her alongside established figures such as Félix González-Torres, Kara Walker and Ai Weiwei. González-Torres built his candy works, among them “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991), from sweets piled to a lover’s body weight and offered to viewers to eat, a layered figure for consumption, time and attachment (Art Institute of Chicago n.d.). Crucially, his viewers consumed the work: the pile shrank as they ate, loss made literal. Li’s sugar tends to be admired rather than eaten, which raises the question of whether her ephemerality is enacted or merely depicted. Walker poured the colonial history of sugar into A Subtlety (2014), while Weiwei turns inherited objects into arguments about power (Art UK 2020). Each finds an echo in Li’s handling of substance and memory.
Few direct contemporaries work the way Li does, and that scarcity reads as a strength rather than a gap. Plenty of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) artists use cultural symbols as historical and multinational markers, yet the register Li works in remains unusual. That conversation has its own ecosystem: institutions such as esea contemporary in Manchester and the annual ESEA Heritage Month sustain a thriving field of practitioners, though few approach material impermanence as Li does. The organic quality of her chosen materials, the rotting aubergine and the sugar painting that waits to be eaten, marks her practice as one that rewards attention. A sceptic might press one question: does rendering loss so sweet sharpen the politics, or does it sedate them? But it is a question that Li frames with the bitterness of time, buoyed by the sublime taste of consummate moments.
Bibliography
Art Institute of Chicago n.d., ‘”Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)’, viewed 4 June 2026, www.artic.edu/artworks/152961/untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a.
Art UK 2020, ‘Sweets, slavery and sculptures: a brief history of sugar in art’, Art UK, viewed 4 June 2026, artuk.org/discover/stories/sweets-slavery-and-sculptures-a-brief-history-of-sugar-in-art.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation n.d., ‘”Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)’, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, viewed 4 June 2026, www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/works/untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a.
Li S n.d., artist website and statements, viewed 4 June 2026, www.shihuiliellen.com.
The Beijinger 2025, ‘Exploring the culture behind Chinese sugar art’, The Beijinger, 15 February, viewed 4 June 2026, www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2025/02/15/exploring-culture-behind-chinese-sugar-art.
EXHIBITIONS / SHOWS
Soft, group exhibition, personal project, Quay Arts, Isle of Wight, UK — 9 Aug.–4 Oct. 2025
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, group exhibition, personal project, Manchester Waterside Gallery — 18 Aug.–11 Oct. 2025
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, group exhibition, personal project, Drawing Projects UK — 14 May–10 Aug. 2025
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, group exhibition, personal project, Falmouth Art Gallery — 1 Feb.–10 May 2025
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, group exhibition, personal project, The Salisbury Museum — 26 Oct. 2024–26 Jan. 2025
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, group exhibition, personal project, London, UK — 3–16 Oct. 2024
Falling Down, Ha-ha Gap, group exhibition, personal project, London, UK — 12–16 Dec. 2024
What Is Art, group exhibition, personal project, Boomer Gallery, London, UK — 7 Jun. 2024
Ignorance is Bliss, group exhibition, collaborative project, Swiss Church, London, UK — 22 Mar. 2024
Red Moon, immersive interactive concert (Director), collaborative project, St Gabriel’s Pimlico, London, UK — 13 Nov. 2023
The Shock in Truth, group exhibition, personal project, Fake Lates, Science Museum, London, UK — 29 Mar. 2023
Crime City, Kunming Fantastic Art Exhibition 2022, Kunming, China — 12 Nov. 2022–28 Feb. 2023
Drunk Story, Xiangyu E Turning Corner Exhibition, Changsha, Hunan, China — 29 Jun.–20 Sep. 2022
Narrative, Bamboo Slips Museum, Changsha, China — 26 Sep.–8 Oct. 2021
YOLO Music Festival, collaborative project, Xiamen, China — 31 Dec. 2019
AWARDS / NOMINATIONS
Artist of the Month, ArtJobs — Jul. 2025
The Sweet Price, personal project, shortlisted for 2024 BADA Art Prize — May 2025
The Last Shepherd, collaborative project, shortlisted for 2024 8KRAW Awards — Jan. 202
The Sweet Price, personal project, Highly Commended Award, Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize — Oct. 2024
EDUCATION
Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK — Sept. 2023–Dec. 2024. MA in Expanded Practice. Grade: Distinction
UAL London College of Communication, London, UK — Sept. 2020–June 2023. BA in Interaction Design Arts. Grade: First Class Honours
UAL London College of Communication, London, UK — Sept. 2019–June 2020. CertHE Preparation for Design, Media and Screen. Grade: Distinction
www.shihuiliellen.com
Images courtesy of the artist © Shihui Li. This article is part of a supported series by emerging artists including Shihui Li. All unattributed photography by Shihui Li.
Ex-London based reader of art and culture. LSE Masters Graduate. Arts and Culture writer since 1995 for Future Publishing, Conde Nast, Wig Magazine and Oyster. Specialist subjects include; media, philosophy, cultural aesthetics, contemporary art and French wine. When not searching for road-worn copies of eighteenth-century travelogues he can be found loitering in the inspirational uplands of art galleries throughout Europe.
