Opening for 'Perceiving Nature: Exploring Empathy Through Non-Human Portraiture'

Come join us for the opening event of Kelly Li's debut art show, Perceiving Nature: Exploring Empathy Through Non-Human Portraiture. Arrive ready to have conversations, meet new people, and drink wine! ----- My work is at the intersection of art, architecture, and the environment, exploring how deep emotional connection with non-human beings can expand our capacity for empathy. While my architectural background contextualizes my fascination with complex systems and different scales of the environment, my artwork gets at a more personal belief that systemic change begins with shifts in our individual perception. Clouds and trees are monumental, spatial forces that beckon to us even within dense urban landscapes. By approaching them through the lens of portraiture—a term typically reserved for people—I invite viewers to intimately connect and empathize with these non-human beings. How does one bring about meaningful change within convoluted, harmful systems? I have been exploring this question in different iterations. In my architecture thesis, Water Imperatives: Reframing Systems for Viable Water Futures, I used environmental scientist Donella Meadows’ analytical framework to identify paradigm shifts in our collective mindset as the necessary genesis for much larger change. As people, both our strength and weakness is that we need emotional connection to learn and understand. The Overstory by Richard Powers uses beautiful narratives of characters’ deep relationships with trees to offer an emotional gateway into these ancient beings, and reading it ultimately changed my own perspective on trees more deeply than any article, factoid, or lecture. Building on these two ideas, my art explores emotional resonance as an essential vehicle for change, primarily through the medium of oil painting while also incorporating metals, enamels, graphite, and colored pencil. The word “nature” contains an interesting dual meaning: the external world such as our natural surroundings, and also the internal essence of a being. Getting to the nature of something is a fundamental, intrinsic aspiration. Can looking outward shift our inward beliefs, and vice versa? Can presenting these portraits of clouds change your relationship with water and the climate, and can tree portraits change your relationship with plants and ecology? My work encourages viewers to truly perceive these non-human entities with radical acts of empathy, creating an avenue to expand our collective care for the environment and one another.