X.A. Li
The Ease of Desire #2
experimental video generated using custom software and datasets
X. A. Li is a multi-disciplinary artist and computer scientist residing in Chicago. She uses media, sound, algorithms, and text to explore the relationship between individual personhood and contemporary systems, using computational methods to derive human meaning from large datasets and complex technological and economic phenomena.
The Ease of Desire is a series of video mosaics juxtaposing commercial imagery with associated realities typically hidden. Consumer products are marketed as desirable and pristine while obscuring the physical realities they require, react to, and cause. This piece renders videos of make-up application in medical images of skin cancer and other malignant abnormalities. The constituent images fade away as the viewer moves further from the piece, mirroring how the unpleasant becomes subsumed into the aspirational and pleasurable.
© X.A. Li