In an age dominated by consumer desire, sweetness is no longer simply a gustatory pleasure; it also serves as a cultural and ethical metaphor. At the intersection of contemporary art and ecological critique, interdisciplinary artist Li Shihui's "Sweet Price" uses sugar as a blade to pierce the hypocritical veneer of human civilization.
Li Shihui's work often navigates the gap between sensory experience and social critique, creating an intriguing tension between sweet and bitter, light and heavy. A Chinese artist long based in London, she blends traditional craftsmanship with contemporary expression, exploring the complex relationship between human behavior, ecological crisis, and cultural loss. Her work has been included in the collection of the German Climate Art Institute and has garnered significant attention at venues such as the London Science Museum.
Li Shihui's artistic language consistently focuses on the material's inherent qualities and social implications. In her signature work, "Sweet Price," Li Shihui chooses sugar painting, a Chinese intangible cultural heritage, as her primary medium. In her system, sugar is not simply a medium but a symbolic carrier with "behavioral" properties. It symbolizes instant gratification and also implies chronic self-destruction; it is beautiful, delicious, and alluring, yet also fragile, volatile, and difficult to preserve. Furthermore, this substance, once a Ming Dynasty sacrificial offering ("Sugar Prime Minister") and later a street snack, has become a witness to its double extinction in her hands. In her view, the extinction of species and the disappearance of skills are different aspects of the same "dissolution" logic.
In this work, she uses sugar to create paintings which representing six species once "eaten to extinction" by humans, such as the passenger pigeon, Caribbean monk seal, Stella's manatee, great auk, Hayasaka rhinoceros, and plains zebra, all in a caramelized form. The creative process adheres strictly to intangible cultural heritage techniques: she boils sugar in a copper pot until it reaches the amber stage at 160°C, allowing the liquid to be both shaped and drawn, yet on the verge of carbonization which is a state of flux that mirrors the fragile balance of ecosystems under human intervention. These sugar sculptures, both alluring and fragile, create a subtle emotional shift between the viewer's gaze and swallowing: from desire, to hesitation, to reflection.
This tension between fragility and endurance continued in SOFT, the biennial open exhibition at Quay Arts, where Sweet Price was recently shown. The exhibition gathered twenty-one artists from across the UK, exploring the theme of softness through tactile, emotional, and social dimensions. Installed in the West Gallery, Li’s fragile sugar forms shimmered under shifting light, holding their own kind of softness: ephemeral yet insistent, tender yet unsettling.
The exhibition encourages multiple readings of the word “soft”: as material pliancy, as emotional vulnerability, or as soft power. It’s the quiet strength that resists domination through empathy and subtle influence. Visitors often describe feeling an unexpected intimacy in the space: the sense that something as delicate as sugar, thread, or breath can still hold weight, that care itself can be an act of resistance.
SOFT takes place at Quay Arts, a leading arts centre on the Isle of Wight. Housed in a Grade II–listed former brewery overlooking the River Medina, its West Gallery, designed by award-winning architect Tony Fretton (Camden Arts Centre, Lisson Gallery, ArtSway), is the island’s largest public exhibition space. Over the years, it has hosted artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, Kurt Jackson, Martin Creed, Vija Celmins, and Richard Long, while continuing to support emerging voices.
For Li Shihui, showing Sweet Price here is not just an exhibition but a dialogue. It’s a way to let softness travel, dissolve, and take root elsewhere. As the works slowly fade under natural humidity, they embody the exhibition’s spirit: much here is slowly conceived, and softly made. Yet the questions they leave behind about consumption, memory, and the tenderness of loss linger far longer than the sugar itself.
Written by Xiaofan Jiang
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