Darren Guo Li (b. 2002, Saskatoon, Canada) is a Chinese-Canadian artist and scientist. He obtained a Bachelor’s of Science from McGill University where he studied Quantitative Biology and will begin the MA Art and Science course at Central Saint Martins in 2025.

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darren1650@gmail.com

Statement

My research-based practice is rooted in interdisciplinary scientific and queer thought, combining learnings from my undergraduate studies with autotheoretical methods navigating my queerness as Chinese diaspora.

Queerness can be viewed both as an identity or state of being outside heteronormative bounds but also, argued by ethnic queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz, as an existence in the not-yet-here, as a stepping out from the past in an orientation toward a queer futurity of infinite potentialities (Muñoz, 2009). Queerness’s intersection with ethnic and minoritarian embodiements and lived experiences enables new agency in our potential to reconfigure self-hood beyond hegemonic ideologies and systems (Muñoz, 2009).

On the other hand, from an evolutionary and ecological perspective, the human has become a cybernetic ecosystem, where survival demands our biological systems to adapt with technological advancements and neoliberal societal, natural, and computational systems of power.

My practice aims to (de)construct, (re)configure, and (re)represent the ethnic queer body and its embodied identity as both a product of these systems of power and a site of resistance to them, and, ultimately as an active agent of change within the larger discourses of planetary computation, climate change, and techno-ecological futures.

My current focus is on the queer body and its ideological and representational entanglements with Chaos Theory and New Materialist theory. Chaos theory studies the beautiful, complex, and random patterns of unpredictable mathematical systems, like ecosystems, the human brain, or the stock market. New Materialism argues the relational, metaphysical co-becoming of entities, human and non-human, in interconnected chaotic systems. In my new painting direction, Fugitive matter, I hope to explore the queer body and its agency as a coupled chaotic system, one which exists fluidly and interconnectedly with others and within the chaotic systems it inhabits: social, natural, computational. Through mixed-media painting, I would like to depict the mysterious, complex, and chaotic fluidity of the body and its identity; the freedom which emerges out of ones rejection of rigid heternormative codes; the potentialities of compassion and hope that emerge from ones connections with others, both human and non-human; the empowerment of movement, dance, and gesture in transforming and reclaiming ones bodily agency and identity.