Statement

Xy June Li (b. 1988, Jiujiang; lives in Stuttgart)

I work where authorities intervene in reality and distort the routes to truth, for instance, in colonial archives, bureaucratic procedures, the language of ideology, and AI-generated images.

I enter these systems from inside. A missionary who founded a colonial resort in my hometown is brought before a court in the Chinese underworld. A consulate issues visas by folk divination. An archive of the Ministry of Artificial Truth releases memories of the last human in 2666. The forms remain recognizable. The logics inside them have been replaced.

I grew up with a language where the past stands in front and the future behind. I carry that with me into every Western institution I walk in, and into every language model that is trained on the archives of the twentieth century’s authorities.