Palmer Gallery, in London, attempted something similar through its recent show Handful of Dust which considered sand as a mnemonic material and shapeshifting archive, slowing the spectator’s journey by situating them in a space of primordial experience. In this context, Li Li Ren stood out for her use of 3D-modelling software to develop a series of sculptures — from dismembered arms to desiccated topographies — that expressed the distribution of the body across physical and digital, and human and nonhuman domains.
At a moment when art’s legacy structures are giving way to a new border economy, work like Ren’s can help to ensure that AI and generative media do not create a state of unresolvable impasse but instead engineer a place where analogue and digital media live together in a rich field of hybrid creativity.
