+ About the work

The Stage is a new work by Yushi Li, commissioned and produced in partnership with KOKO, one of London's most iconic music venues.

In THE STAGE Li has drawn inspiration from the classic painting Phryne before the Areopagus by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1861).

In the original painting, Phryne's defender Hypereides reveals her body, using her beauty to please the judges during her trial for impiety. Li has focussed on this moment of revelation, though in her version, it is a male body that is exposed, rather than a female one.

About the work, Li has said: “At the same time, other men in the scene imply a process of replacement, in which the man behind my robe is changing from one to another and another, like the endless metonymy of desire.”

+ About the artist

Yushi Li is a Chinese artist based in London. Having recently finished her MA studies at the Royal College of Art she has won accolades for her ingeniously produced work. Li was part of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition in 2018 and received the Royal Photography Society Hundred Heroines Award.