NTNU Alumni Becomes Youngest Artist to Represent Taiwan at Venice Biennale
Yi-Fan Li, an alumnus of the Department of Fine Arts (Class of 2011) at National Taiwan Normal University, has been selected to represent Taiwan at the 61st Venice International Art Biennale. Presenting his work Screen Melancholy (鬱卒的平面), Li has become the youngest artist ever to represent Taiwan at this prestigious event. The spotlight upon this acclaimed new media artist also underscores NTNU's longstanding commitment to nurturing world-class artistic talent.
Born in Taipei in 1989, Yi-Fan Li began his artistic journey through the rigorous fine arts training offered at NTNU's Department of Fine Arts. It was during his undergraduate years that Li began to look beyond traditional painting, developing a keen interest in visual storytelling, digital imaging, and technical media. He credits his foundational training at NTNU for instilling the cross-disciplinary thinking that defines his practice today. After graduating from NTNU, Li further studied New Media Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts.
Li’s career trajectory exemplifies NTNU's educational philosophy: grounding students in classical artistic tradition while cultivating the adaptability and intellectual curiosity necessary to engage with an ever-evolving global creative landscape.
An Artist on the World Stage
Venice Biennale’s Taiwan Pavilion reflects both Li’s exceptional individual achievement as well as Taiwan's growing presence in international contemporary art. Organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), the Taiwan Pavilion is on view from 9 May through 22 November 2026 at the Palazzo delle Prigioni in Venice. Adjacent to the iconic Bridge of Sighs, the event venue once served as a 17th-century former prison. Its setting resonates deeply with the conceptual framework of Screen Melancholy, a large-scale, immersive installation that interrogates surveillance, algorithmic control, and the psychological conditions of living in a screen-saturated world. In a landmark curatorial decision, this is the first time TFAM has conceived the entire Palazzo delle Prigioni as a single, unified artwork since the Taiwan Pavilion's inaugural presentation there in 1995.
The exhibition has drawn immediate international attention. Representatives from the Tate, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) attended the opening, and multiple international art publications have named the Taiwan Pavilion among the must-see presentations of this year's Biennale.
Innovation Rooted in Cross-Disciplinary Training
Central to Li's practice is a proprietary “digital puppeteering system” that he developed independently, integrating virtual reality and game engine technology to enable a single artist to perform, direct, photograph, and compose an entire cinematic work. His approach collapses conventional boundaries between animation, sculpture, performance, and cinema. Curator Raphael Fonseca describes this working method as transforming 'the anxieties of the digital age into a poetic visual language.'
In Screen Melancholy, oversized sculptural body parts such as hands, feet, and heads are scattered throughout the prison halls, inviting visitors to sit on them, even charge their phones. Video characters trapped within digital worlds mirror the visitors themselves, caught between algorithmic feeds and physical reality. The boundary between observer and observed, between the virtual and the real, dissolves deliberately and unsettlingly. Li has acknowledged the dual nature of technological dependence with characteristic wit, noting that only two industries refer to their customers as “users”: software companies and drug networks. This metaphor runs through Li's critique of platform capitalism and AI-driven influence.
The Venice Biennale is just the most recent recognition of Li’s creative force. It follows a series of major awards, including the 20th Taishin Arts Award for Visual Arts (2022), the 46th Golden Harvest Award (2024), and the Hung Foundation Bronze Bell Arts Prize. Li’s work has been exhibited across France, Japan, the United States, Spain, and Belgium, establishing him as one of Taiwan's most internationally active artists working today.
Yi-Fan Li’s selection as Taiwan's representative at age 37 signals a broader shift in Taiwan's cultural diplomacy, one that increasingly centers the voices of younger, digitally-native artists capable of engaging global conversations around technology, identity, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. NTNU congratulates Li on this extraordinary achievement and takes great pride in his journey from the Department of Fine Arts to one of the world's most prestigious contemporary art platforms. His work stands as a testament to the depth of artistic education at NTNU and to the capacity of Taiwan's creative community to contribute meaningfully to international cultural dialogue.
Exhibition Information Taiwan Pavilion, 61st Venice International Art Biennale Screen Melancholy: Lee Yi-Fan 9 May – 22November 2026 | Palazzo delle Prigioni, Venice, Italy Official website: https://www.taiwaninvenice.org/2026/