Art as Embrace

CONTEMPORARY ART CRITICISM & CURATORIAL RESEARCH

Li Yukun (Da Xiong) is a Chinese art critic and curator, and the founding editor of Yiyishu (呓艺术), a WeChat journal of art criticism with more than 13,000 steady readers. His work returns to a single question: how can contemporary art step out of the closed circuit of the art world and embrace the public again?

From the Column

On the Failure of Contemporary Art: Why 99.5% of Artists Are Made to Fail
A long-form critique on why the system, not the artist, manufactures failure — and what the art world does with it. (Text in Chinese.)

2026

Books & Manuscripts

01 / PUBLICATIONS

Publications

Five completed book manuscripts — on Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys, place-based practice, and the failure of the contemporary.

02 / WRITING

Writing

37 long-form essays, 2019–2026, each with an English title and abstract.

03 / RECORD

Writing Record

A formal record of completed manuscripts and published texts. No estimated figures, anywhere.

Explore

04 / WORKS

Works

Curatorial practice as the testing ground of theory: thirty-plus exhibitions, nearly two hundred artists.

05 / ABOUT

About

Statement, method — archival criticism in three steps — and position.

06 / CONTACT

Contact

Commissions, curatorial proposals, lectures and collaboration.

Follow the Journal

The journal Yiyishu (呓艺术) publishes new criticism in Chinese on a regular basis. To follow it, search for 呓艺术 in WeChat, or copy the name below. For direct enquiries: yiart1001@gmail.com.

Copy the journal name Browse the column

A note on language: the English section presents the structure, positions and publications of this site. The essays themselves remain in Chinese; each is listed here with an English title and a short abstract.