Joyce Li, Peregrinations

We warmly invite you to the exhibition opening on October 6 at Concrete Gallery.

“Peregrinations” brings together four series of drawings and prints that were created during the first year of my MFA studies. While the subjects of these series are diverse, all of them contain some aspect of narrative. Sometimes the narrative follows a clear, linear trajectory, while in other cases it is fragmented or unresolved. The presence of movement in these works, whether in the form of a journey or the attempt to reach a particular goal, connects with the idea of peregrination: a prolonged period of travel or wandering, usually through an unfamiliar place and undertaken on foot.

There is a strange kind of freedom that comes from being between places. While a journey is still underway, its outcome remains open, leaving room for the traveler to imagine different possibilities. Somewhere in the back of their mind, they know the journey will eventually end, but they are also aware that the end of one journey may simply be the starting point for another. In this sense, there are parallels between undertaking a peregrination and engaging in the creative process, in which the freedom of creating and the uncertainty of the outcome are inextricably linked.