李艾筱 LI Aixiao

Their personal belongings2014-2019

Their personal belongings

2014-2019

What is Your Most Important Personal Belonging?

I've been asking this question for six years. So far, people that have been photographed have offered 100 different answers. My email and WeChat have also received various answers. In previous sharing sessions, many people wrote down different answers on paper.

I asked everyone participating in the project to take a photo of their most important personal belongings using a phone or camera. All of them had a sincere conversation with me. I know the importance of these personal belongings to them, even small, unimpressive ones. These personal belongings are lifeless but people have deep feelings toward them, breathing life and presence into them.

Have their most important personal belongings reminded you of your own?

Be naked and let your precaution down.

A story about a part of life.

An important personal belonging.

But their expressions were not recorded.


I saw they cried their eyes out.

I saw their unstrained laugh.

They discussed their romances, dreams, memories, and secrets...

 And I was the only listener.

They opened their hearts to me and I gained the trust that was difficult to obtain.


Many people considered this photograph as a souvenir or a new beginning.

I discovered that people were in urgent need of a channel to express their feelings and to talk about certain experiences but they failed to find a suitable person to talk to.

  • Personal Belongings

    2013-2019

  • Balance

    2017
  • Fearlessness

    2017

  • A Period of Life

    2017

  • Memories

    2017

  • Saxophone and Soldier

    2017

  • Itchy scar in Winter

    2016
  • Dream of Hero

    2016

  • Ten Years of Love Fragments

    2016
  • Lute and Him

    2016
  • Love & Cervical Cancer

    2016
  • The Contest Between Little Boy and Adult

    2016
  • 18 Year Old Tattooist

    2016
  • The Decision of Adult

    2016
  • 2002
    2016
  • Dialogue with Ex-boyfriend’s Jacket

    2016
  • Kazak Girl Who Loves Qinghai Tibet Plateau

    2016
  • The Last Family Photo

    2016
  • Loneliness

    2016
  • More Important Than Rice

    2015
  • Father & Empty Bottle

    2015
  • Death

    2015
  • The Ego's World

    2015
  • Two EX-boyfriends

    2015
  • More Than 30 Samples

    2015
  • Beauty of Lotus

    2015
  • Birthmark & Time

    2015
  • Mirror

    2015
  • Ballet Girl in High Heels

    2015
  • Can't live without phone

    2014

  • Foundation

    2014

  • Life
    2014
  • Dreams Come True

    2014
  • Li Aixiao
    2014
  • A Marriage Mania Who Can’t Get Married

    2013
  • Spiritual Pillar

    2017

II. Performance "Li Aixiao and Her 100 Pictures"

  • Li Aixiao and Her 100 Pictures, Video of  Performance

    2019

  • Li Aixiao and Her 100 Pictures

    2019

III. Performance "Dust to Dust"

  • Dust to Dust, Photography of Performance

    2019

IV. Photography & Photoshop"Alchemy"

  • Alchemy I

    2019
  • Alchemy II

    2019

  • Alchemy III

    2019
  • Alchemy IV

    2019

I. Photography "Personal Belongings"

Based on my educational background in Journalism and Applied Psychology, applied interview and psychology to the creation of the art photography project "Personal Belongings". 100 ordinary person aged between 18 and 89 was photographed during the five years project. Through the objects and human body, different parts of the life of each one were presented, including stories about dreams, romances, kinship, disease, disability, and self-search.

In the present era of rapid economic development, the relationship between humans and objects is even more complicated. Although this project discusses the relationship between humans and objects, it expounds on the relationship between humans, and the relationship between human beings and innermost beings.


II.  Performance "Li Aixiao and Her 100 Pictures"

On April 21, 2019, I invited 100 people I’ve photographed in the past five years to a performance. They posted the pictures which I took of each of them on my body, and I left myself naked to all the naked people I'd photographed. Go back to every story I have shot in the past, recall the brief time I spent with everyone, respond to the question "What is your most important personal belonging", return all emotions to myself, and recycle all feelings from inside to outside.

This is the last photo of the project Personal Belongings.


III. Performance "Dust to Dust"

44 photos recorded the process that the photos pasted all over my body slowly faded away until completely disappeared in 15 days.

Everything in the world, like these photos, disappears completely with time, eventually ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.


IV.  Photography & Photoshop"Alchemy"

Those photos, like the cuticle, fall off little by little over time and then attached themselves to bras, clothes, trousers, towels, quilts, toilets, computer desks, and floors. Scattered all over my living environment in this way, reminding me that they have appeared on my body in the form of photos. I photographed the traces of their existence and turned them into what I imagined them to be. I don't know why I suddenly thought of alchemy. There is an explanation of "alchemy", which I quite agree with. It says that "alchemy" is about making things useful again by understanding, decomposing, and reconstructing materials.


Related Work

  • YES OR NO (2018 Art Nova 100)

    Guardian Art Center, Beijing, 2018

    View in exhibitions

  • YES OR NO (2018 Art Nova 100)

    Guardian Art Center, Beijing, 2018

    View in exhibitions

  • Living Library & Personal Belongings

    Flash Space, Chengdu, China, 2018

    View in exhibitions

  • Analysis of Personal Cases of 100 Chinese Post-85s Photographers  from Natural Growth

    PIP, Pingyao, China, 2017

    View in exhibitions

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