BIO. / CV.

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Raised within the rapidly urbanising terrains of northern China, Miao Li (b. 1996) situated his longing for the distant and the poetic within ink painting, wildlife documentaries and fantasy literature. Now based in the Netherlands, his practice operates diasporically, traversing ecologies, aesthetics, and epistemic systems.

Working with trees as non-human collaborators, his practice unfolds rhizomatically, less as a fixed structure than as an evolving network of relations. Drawing from bonsai, urban forestry, and mythology, he engages material, biological, and cosmic formations as interdependent processes. Through iterative investigations of structure, pattern, and space, he develops a craft of connection that mediates between the physical, conceptual, and spiritual realms, foregrounding their latent continuities.

Informed by traditions of nature reverence and ancestral worship, and shaped by Buddhist monastic training, Li has cultivated an intuitive, embodied, and situated methodology. Making becomes a process of attunement to emergent conditions in the present. His scenographic installations manifest as immersive environments, akin to sacred groves or ritual sites, where the minute and the vast are mutually implicated. By centring non-human agency, his work traces distributed sensibilities across time, space, and matter, unsettling the hegemony of anthropocentrism.

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EXHIBITIONS

As Within, So Without, Van Eesteren Museum (NL)
Group Exhibition 12.2025—02.2026
Root Emotions, Van Eesteren Museum (NL)
Solo Exhibition 11.2025—12.2025
KVVAK event with gallery CHAxART, Rijksmuseum (NL)
Pop-up Show 05.2025
Beinglonging: New Trajectories in the Third Context, gallery CHAxART, Design Biennale Rotterdam (NL)
Group Exhibition 02.2025
Zen Air Eiheiji (JP)
Group Exhibition 11.2024
ArtEZ Finals (NL)
Group Exhibition 07.2023
The Symbiocene Forest, BioArt Laboratories, Dutch Design Week (NL)
Group Exhibition 10.2022
Chacycle, gallery CHAxART (NL)
Group Exhibition 04.2022
Eat Together, gallery CHAxART (NL)
Solo Exhibition 11.2021

RESIDENCIES & GRANTS

Sommer Atelier Aschersleben (DE)
Residency 06.2026—09.2026
Taidetila Muijala (FI)
Residency 04.2026—06.2026
Talent Development Grant, Creative Industries Fund NL (NL)
Grant 2025
Artist in Residence, ZEN AIR EIHEIJI (JP)
Residency 09.2024—11.2024
Design Grant, Creative Industries Fund NL (NL)
Grant 2024
Project Subsidies for the Professional Arts, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst (NL)
Grant 2024
Grant Stroomversneller, Cultuur Academy (NL)
Grant 2024

EDUCATION

Monastic Training of Sōtō Zen Buddhism, Zen River Temple (NL)
06.2025—04.2026
BA Product Design, Cum Laude, ArtEZ University of the Arts (NL)
09.2019—07.2023
BEng Industrial Design, China University of Mining and Technology (CN)
09.2015—07.2018

WORKING EXPERIENCE

Junior Designer, Jongeriuslab (NL)
10.2023—06.2024
Internship, Studio Jos Klarenbeek (NL)
03.2022—08.2022
Internship, Fillip Studios (NL)
06.2021—08.2021
Internship, Benwu Studio (CN)
03.2019—05.2019

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Weaving Techniques, UNStudio (NL)
Workshop 03.2026
Making Meditation, MA Materials in Artistic Practices, Frank Mohr Institute (NL)
Labweek 05.2025
Artifical Botany, BA Graphic Design Arnhem, ArtEZ University of the Arts (NL)
Workshop 01.2024
Material Inquiry, BA Product Design Arnhem, ArtEZ University of the Arts (NL)
Workshop 12.2023