Ariel Li
Spatial Artist / Speculative Narrator & Researcher
Royal College of Art, MA Interior Design
University of the Arts London, GradDip Spatial Design
Sichuan University, BA Environmental Arts
Ariel Li is a London-based multimedia spatial artist whose practice ranges across installation, sculpture, moving image, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Space is the central medium of her narrative. Working with neglected materials and fractured structures, she reconfigures spatial and material relationships to reshape sensory experience. Through transformation, light, sound, and spatial tension, she creates immersive environments that explore how the qualities of materials influence emotion and perception.
Her research engages with memory, identity, and material narrative, drawing from spatial poetics, sensory observation, and research- driven experimentation. Through an interdisciplinary approach, she examines the relationships between materiality, temporality, emotion, and the body. Her installations often take shape as environments with a permeable quality where previously conflicting sensations gradually merge through a distinct narrative structure. This process reveals new spatial qualities and enables deeper audience engagement.
Ariel’s work has been exhibited across institutions and projects in China, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy. Key presentations include the Royal Academy (UK), the London Design Festival (UK), London Craft Week (UK), the Goethe-Institut London (UK), and the historic Peckham Rye Station (UK). Her work has also appeared at the West Bund Art Center (CN), Stone Art Gallery (CN), Red Gallery (AU) in Melbourne, and Damablu Gallery (IT) in Rome.
Through her interdisciplinary practice, Ariel continues to explore how spatial storytelling within immersive environments can evoke empathy, activate collective memory, and cultivate poetic modes of perception.
Selected Exhibitions
An Authentic Delirium, The Wrong Biennale 2025-2026 [UK]
Ambitions! Art & Design FutureLab, Westbund Art Centre, Shanghai, 11.2025 China [CN]
Plural Futures, London Design Festival 2025×Koppel Project×MANA×SynonymLab, Annex, 09.2025 London [UK]
Everything Then is Now: Alter Peckham, Southwark Council×Spira9 Art, The Old Waiting Room, Peckham Rye Station, Supported from Architectural Heritage Fund and Frieze, 09.2025 London [UK]
The Vanishing Back Wave, WeArt×CIC Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 08-11. 2025 China [CN]
Small Wonder, Red Gallery, Melbourne, 06-07.2025 Australia [AU]
Unanchored Crafting, London Craft Week 2025×Alsolike Gallery, 05.2025 London [UK]
Intergrade: Unfinished Migration, Indra Gallery×Spira9 Art×ChinChinArt, 04.2025 London [UK]
The Unbound, Stone Art Gallery, Zhengzhou, 04-06.2025 China [CN]
New Dream Core, Damablu Gallery, Roma [IT]08-09 Nov 2024, Floating Dream, Aurora Art & Culture×Kupfer Gallery, 04.2025 London [UK]
You, Me, Us (Short film, Credit: Scenography Artist), Screening Programme of Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2024, New Wave: Fashioning Our Futures, 11.2024 York [UK]
Escape from Tartarus, London Design Festival 2024, Safe House 2, 09.2024 London [UK]
Ascertain, LumiNoir Art×Espacio Gallery, 07.2024 London [UK]
Other ways of being, Artwork ‘Building Nomadism: Move into your future, 2065’ Screening, SuperFutures×Charleston, 07.2023 [UK]
John Hejduk London Masque, Royal Academy, 03.2022-05.2023 London [UK]
Future Monument, Royal College of Art, 02.2023 London [UK]
Air and Dreams: Proposals on the Imagination of Matter, Goethe Institut (DE), 12.2022 London [UK]
Remote Landing, Algaed Academy×Beijing Design Week 2021, Zhundi Theatre-Langyuan Art Station, 09-10.2021 Beijing [CN]
The Reveries of the Many, Arthill Gallery, 09.2021 London [UK]
The Grammatical Structure of Art, BACA Art Centre, 04-05.2021 Beijing [CN]
Nostalgic Land, 1cm Studio, 02-03.2021 Shanghai [CN] & Boston [US]
Winter Exhibition 2020, EDA Space Gallery, 11-12.2020 Shenzhen [CN]
Here</>There: Future of Art - Global Cutting-edge Design Exhibition, Today Art Museum, 10-11.2019 Beijing [CN]
Awards
Future Archive, shortlisted for ArtEvol 2025: Voice from the Undegined, Saatchi Gallery, London, 2025 [UK]
Future Archive, shortlisted for Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2024, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2024 [UK]
Building Nomadism, CORE77 Design Awards, Speculative Design Category: Notable, 2024 [US]
Fusion Objects, First Winner, Global Talent Art Prize, 6th edition, 2024 [UK]
Press & Media
[Ongoing project] The Artist’s Muse: the presences that inspire you, U1 Gallery Tokyo, Jan 2026 [JP]
Ariel Li Finds New Stories, New Identities in What We Leave Behind, Art Plugged, 20 Nov 2025 [UK]
Transparent Dwelling: Fragments, Aura, and Narrative in the Spatial Installations of Ariel Li, Artron Net, 12 Nov 2025 [CN]
The moment it began, or the turning point that defined you, U1 Gallery Tokyo, 14 Sep 2025 [JP]
101 Art Book: Portrait Edition, Arts to Hearts Project, 24 April 2025 [UK]
Silence and Fracture in Marginal Spaces: The Material Narrative of Ariel Li, Contemporary Art Curator, 09 April 2025 [UK]
How Ariel Li Uses Spatial Narratives to Make Sense of the World, Arts to Hearts Project, 31 Mar 2025 [UK]
Ariel Li: Interview with the 1st Winner of the Global Talent Art Prize (6th edition), Cucumber Magazine, 18 June 2024 [UK]
Through Spatial Narratives, Ariel Li: 1st Winner of the Global Talent Art Prize (6th edition), Cucumber Magazine, 18 June 2024 [UK]
Void Space in Art: Ariel Li, MUYA Arts, 12 June 2021 [CN]
The Grammatical Structure of Art: Empathy in Space, BACA Art Centre, 06 May 2021 [CN]