Bio

Wendy Li is a multidisciplinary artist who works primarily with painting, time-based installation and photography. Her works explore themes of time, personal or communal narratives, mundane life consisting of sound, materiality, sensual and abstract beauty.

Artist Statement

Tide: The Distance is a two-channel video installation accompanied by a sound composition. It explores loss and tension—the distance between lovers. They approach each other but never meet, turning away when the other comes closer physically or emotionally. The painful distance remains, a dissonance. They long for each other; in reality, they never sync up, even if they are in the same space. The tide rises, the tide falls. The loop continues.

The installation activates the space between the two projections, inviting viewers to be at play in the fluctuating distance. While the figures within the frame can only see introspectively, the viewers can see both sides. The viewers’ existence and their perceptions, together with the projectors and projections, also play in the varying distance.

The two videos have  different durations, looped individually, introducing an element of chance. Thus, the installation constantly changes—a true reflection of reality, the capricious distance and the grief of a strained relationship.

The sound is an independent piece conceptually. The soundscape combines the internal sounds with ambient sounds. While the videos adopt structural and minimalist approaches, the sound is expressive. The tide sound is the base track, layered with other internal and external sounds.

The videos use static frames, long takes, and repetitive movement to convey the tension and the emotional distance, creating awareness of time and space.  The artist was inspired by Hollis Frampton and other structural filmmakers. The title references Henry Longfellow’s poem “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”, speaking to the finality of loss in the passage of time.