Ann

Li

“I heard somewhere once that to know what someone is afraid of losing, watch what they photograph. So let me take a selfie.”

Ann Li is an interdisciplinary digital media artist. Through self-portrait performance, autoethnography, installation, and stop-motion animation, her work orbits two spaces of mutual delirium: the internet, and her own psychology.

The work questions the ritual of self-sacrifice in an age where everyone’s a brand.

CC: I regret to inform you that I can no longer consent to the ritual slaughter of livestock…

Via the persona "CC" (@play_w_cc, 2014 – ) — a fake “influencer” with cannibalistic tendencies, who comes to the artist in a fever dream, only to steal away into the night with her face as she sleeps — Li uses social media performance on Instagram to critique the landscape of influencer culture from its own terrain. Unlike the artist, “CC” is ruthless: it is immune to the psychological pain of devouring oneself. Calmly, it eats its own flesh in the endless cycle of self-commodification on social media, in sushi “mukbangs” made from decoupage, in the feeling of unraveling and raveling again and again, until it finally games the algorithm.