Chitchat With a Creator: Pearlyn Lii
Meet Pearlyn Lii: an interdisciplinary artist and streamer whose practice investigates personhood, neomythology, and the divine feminine
Introducing Pearlyn Lii:
Pearlyn Lii is an interdisciplinary artist and streamer whose practice investigates personhood, neomythology, and the divine feminine. Her work narrates the plight of the human experience through fictional characters in alternate realities, reinterpreting harmful female archetypes. Her work has been presented at New York Live Arts, New Art City, JO-HS, Nous Tous Gallery, and covered by Dezeen, Vogue Italia, Wallpaper*, Forbes, Art in America, and Art She Says. In 2020, Foundation invited her to be one of the first 24 artists to launch the platform.
One sentence to describe the web3 spirit, what would you say?
An ever-transforming space of vividly unique humans that encourage reciprocity and generosity.
How did you hear about NFT and start your journey?
Curator and wonderhuman Lindsay Howard invited me to be one of the first artists on Foundation in 2020, along with 24 other talented artists.
Any tips for people who want to collect NFT but haven’t started yet?
Collect what you gravitate towards and love. I personally love having my work collected by people who appreciate my work and want to support my practice. If you are a new collector, you may feel encumbered if you start thinking about resale value right out the gate.
Tell us about the artwork you are currently working on.
My upcoming piece is titled 'Infinite Mother,' a video game film (known as a machinima), that responds to the disassociation Gen Y & Gen Z feel towards their parents, specifically mothers who have been emotionally absent because of modern cultural pressures. Viewers explore the world of 'Amah,' a deity inspired by Mitochondrial Eve and the Chinese goddess Xi Wangmu. In science and lore, these characters are the mother of mothers, ancestors to us all. Viewers navigate a series of ascending grottos, interpretations of the circles of hell in Western canon and diyu 地狱 in Chinese myth. While the circles traditionally hold different punishments, these grottoes are tableaus of intergenerational pain and spaces for reflection.
This work serves as a salve for a generation seeking connection to their progenitors. It is meant to facilitate the collective processing of lost time, ancestral sense making, and the forming of new family bonds for those of us who have resorted to the internet as our space of care. The project recognizes our interdependence, shared experiences, and a search for family when all too often our bonds feel attenuated or even broken.
Built on the Unreal engine, the visuals utilize recorded motion-capture movements of chimeric fauna scattered throughout the craggy rockscapes, mossy bogs, and serene pools.
Unique to the project is the music: we have transposed my mitochondrial DNA to create a haunting soundscape. The A, T, C, and Gs are inherited from mother to child and trace back to Mitochondrial Eve, humankind's shared matrilineal ancestor.
Concept stills from this piece can be collected on Foundation.
In addition to crypto-related stuff, what else are you interested in? Tell us 1-2 things.
I love gaming and world-building. I played World of Warcraft way back when it first released, and have recently enjoyed Diablo 2 Resurrected. A bit of Animal Crossing as well, and a lot of Tears of the Kingdom. This is an aspect of my life I am excited to fold into my practice. There’s nothing more satisfying than running around in a fantastical world alone, or with your friends.
Well, how does that relate to my practice? I especially gravitate towards the idea of connecting with people through performance. I’ve been wanting to stream on Twitch for years, but was always deterred by the bro-cultch. As I’m making this new experimental game, I want to share my work in progress while streaming, as both myself and as a persona. It’s interesting to me to subvert a platform like Twitch with the work I do around my experience as a female gamer. The platform is a place where people are very focused externally (playing games)—but I want to share my interiority through ‘Infinite Mother,’ and discussing ways of moving through life. ‘Infinite Mother’ reframes shared virtual space as a praxis for global kinmaking, offering an open forum during its making-of, so that the creation of an entirely new world/neomyth is communal—in the same way that you connect with your friends via playing games together.
*Follow Pearlyn Lii on Instagram, Twitch, and Twitter.
