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Chen Li "Dance of the Seven Nets"
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Chen Li
ARTRO is pleased to present Chen Li's solo exhibition "Dance of the Seven Nets", from Jan. 17 to Feb. 8, 2026.
Chen Li’s recent work draws from memories of her childhood in rural China. As a result, she focuses on the irrational elements of folk mysticism, patterns in nature, and a contradictory aesthetic mixed with fallacies.
Her 2024 Balsam Flower series is inspired by memories of dyeing fingernails with balsam flowers in the countryside. As common wild plants in rural areas, balsam and cockscomb flowers become, in Chen’s paintings, a means to capture their demonic nature and unbridled vitality—a force struggling to bloom from rural characteristics and a ‘sense of local’. Her work tries to attend to the ignored voices in marginalized regions—the desire to expand outward and the energy that escapes orthodox narratives.
In Chen’s paintings, mineral-pigment balsam flowers serve as a projection of womanhood in modern contexts. The blooming balsam represents a fluid, self-expanding identity that refuses to aestheticize or sublimate suffering and endurance, while also tracing female desire and fantasy. Soft yet sharp brushstrokes, sweet color blocks, and bewitching floral forms lend the images an elusive mystical quality.
Chen also focuses on visual elements and sensory experiences charged with subtle tension and contradiction: the pattern of moth wings under close gaze, the fuzzy texture of plants, the flowing flicker of candlelight, the serrated edges of crab claws and the damp touch of their bristles. For her, the ceaseless overlapping and swaying of a hairy crab’s legs are a continuation of the life force of balsam flowers—their imagery subtly enfolding the details of many preceding frames. When she perceives the world, it feels less like smoothness and coherence, and more like something fuzzy and aquiver.
In her latest works from 2025, Chen has expanded into lacquer craft, embroidery, and weaving, attempting to merge Salome with the damp scent of fishing gear. Salome’s figure has been reinterpreted repeatedly, drifting from her origin in the New Testament. Her image lingers between breaking free from religious discipline and being continually distorted and annotated. The phrase “dangerous seduction” holds such compelling allure that this infinitely amplified imagination and voyeuristic desire are cut and stitched into the seven veils layered upon her—accompanied by the soft shush of sheer fabric and ornaments brushing together as she dances.
In the work Silk, Sinkers, and the Dance, Chen also incorporates the Chinese folktale of the River Snail Maiden. While Salome seems perpetually trapped between sanctity and seduction, the River Snail Maiden’s story entails another kind of struggle: Is her shell a stolen identity? What divides the veil of seduction from the net that traps the snail—lightness or restraint? Lesley Millar wrote for her curated exhibition Lost in Lace: “Lace is the erotic edge between public and private, pure and impure, innocent and transgressive; a perfect mise en scène, which appears to invite and yet evade; which simultaneously has high and low resolution; which occupies the foreground and gradually fades into the background.” Could the fusion of veil and net create a liminal zone like lace? You cannot be certain, but you will imagine the wandering, itchy whispers that rise when pressing close to such textiles—like crab claws blooming everywhere.
ARTRO cordially invites you to experience the exhibition.
Chen Li’s recent work draws from memories of her childhood in rural China. As a result, she focuses on the irrational elements of folk mysticism, patterns in nature, and a contradictory aesthetic mixed with fallacies.
Her 2024 Balsam Flower series is inspired by memories of dyeing fingernails with balsam flowers in the countryside. As common wild plants in rural areas, balsam and cockscomb flowers become, in Chen’s paintings, a means to capture their demonic nature and unbridled vitality—a force struggling to bloom from rural characteristics and a ‘sense of local’. Her work tries to attend to the ignored voices in marginalized regions—the desire to expand outward and the energy that escapes orthodox narratives.
In Chen’s paintings, mineral-pigment balsam flowers serve as a projection of womanhood in modern contexts. The blooming balsam represents a fluid, self-expanding identity that refuses to aestheticize or sublimate suffering and endurance, while also tracing female desire and fantasy. Soft yet sharp brushstrokes, sweet color blocks, and bewitching floral forms lend the images an elusive mystical quality.
Chen also focuses on visual elements and sensory experiences charged with subtle tension and contradiction: the pattern of moth wings under close gaze, the fuzzy texture of plants, the flowing flicker of candlelight, the serrated edges of crab claws and the damp touch of their bristles. For her, the ceaseless overlapping and swaying of a hairy crab’s legs are a continuation of the life force of balsam flowers—their imagery subtly enfolding the details of many preceding frames. When she perceives the world, it feels less like smoothness and coherence, and more like something fuzzy and aquiver.
In her latest works from 2025, Chen has expanded into lacquer craft, embroidery, and weaving, attempting to merge Salome with the damp scent of fishing gear. Salome’s figure has been reinterpreted repeatedly, drifting from her origin in the New Testament. Her image lingers between breaking free from religious discipline and being continually distorted and annotated. The phrase “dangerous seduction” holds such compelling allure that this infinitely amplified imagination and voyeuristic desire are cut and stitched into the seven veils layered upon her—accompanied by the soft shush of sheer fabric and ornaments brushing together as she dances.
In the work Silk, Sinkers, and the Dance, Chen also incorporates the Chinese folktale of the River Snail Maiden. While Salome seems perpetually trapped between sanctity and seduction, the River Snail Maiden’s story entails another kind of struggle: Is her shell a stolen identity? What divides the veil of seduction from the net that traps the snail—lightness or restraint? Lesley Millar wrote for her curated exhibition Lost in Lace: “Lace is the erotic edge between public and private, pure and impure, innocent and transgressive; a perfect mise en scène, which appears to invite and yet evade; which simultaneously has high and low resolution; which occupies the foreground and gradually fades into the background.” Could the fusion of veil and net create a liminal zone like lace? You cannot be certain, but you will imagine the wandering, itchy whispers that rise when pressing close to such textiles—like crab claws blooming everywhere.
ARTRO cordially invites you to experience the exhibition.
Schedule | Jan 17 (Sat) 2026-Feb 8 (Sun) 2026 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://artro.jp/exhibition/dance-of-the-seven-nets/ | ||||
| Venue | Artro https://artro.jp/ | ||||
| Location | 556 Kaiya-cho, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto 604-8126 | ||||
| Access | 5 minute walk from exit 16 at Karasuma Station on the Hankyu line, 7 minute walk from exit 1 at Shijo Station on the Karasuma subway line, 7 minute walk from exit 5 at Karasuma Oike Station on the Karasuma subway line. | ||||
| Phone | 075-585-4554 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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