Yue Li studied arts management before her formal training in studio art. Interested in addressing social issues through community-based art projects, she hopes to use these projects to discuss the issues facing artists in the twenty-first century, topics such as consumerism and status, and the complex relationship between these topics.

Li’s work explores issues of immigration, feminism, and poverty, through themes of fear and obsession. She currently works with reconstructed, recycled, or secondhand materials. Her recent graduate thesis, “Visual Artists’ Development in the Washington Metropolitan Area,” is based on primary research that included a detailed survey of 130 local artists, with in-depth interviews. She learned that it is nearly impossible for visual artists to live off their work in D.C., because of issues of space, production costs, living expenses, and marketing imperatives. All these experiences have helped define her artistic interests, and Li hopes to make art that challenges and redefines artist spaces in D.C. by bringing her work into the community.