Lan Li (b. 2002, China) is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist. Her work reaches into serious technical explorations of different mediums, including floor loom weaving, woodworking, and ceramics. By seeking small but consistent growth of technical proficiency, she obtains life experiences adapting to work modes in different fields. The refreshing engagement with different types of craft and knowledge motivated her creative expressions, urging her to find precise language or motifs that are deliverable for the audiences. As more shapes, characters, phrases, and rhythm are brought to display in the object she created, the abundance of information is exponentially increasing; which, in the end, leads to a productive conversation between the creator and the audience.

​

"My floor loom weavings offered a rich and conceptual narration oriented by the performance of the material. Yarns take the form of an “information set” so enormous that it is redundant to precisely and thoroughly control each individual. Therefore, I enjoy building a system that manages yarn only loosely, balancing order and chaos within the entity. I hand-dye yarn with an irreproducible recipe, play with tensions, and fully engage with a versatile harness and treadles setup. In this way, I maximize the potential of yarn for showing subjective color and complex patterns. "

​

Lan Li chose to document her practices with Zhizi on the same website, just like living together in a cramped apartment.