Li Yi-Fan: Screen Melancholy / Taiwan in Venice 2026

Why It Matters

Screen Melancholy demonstrates how self‑built digital tools can redefine narrative cinema, while its Venice showcase elevates Taiwan’s cultural profile and signals shifting production models in the subscription‑driven software era.

Key Takeaways

• Screen melancholy concept links digital puppetry to personal anxiety.
• Artist builds custom game-engine puppetry tools for intuitive filmmaking.
• Venice exhibition integrates seating, phone chargers, and scale installations.
• Collaboration emerged via biennial research, evolving into intensive co‑creation.
• Shift to subscription software reshapes artists' workflow and creative control.

Summary

The video features Taiwanese artist Li Yi‑Fan discussing his Venice 2026 exhibition titled “Screen Melancholy,” a curatorial label that captures his obsession with screens, digital puppetry, and the uneasy relationship between individual and mediated world.

Yi‑Fan explains he builds his own puppetry system inside a game engine, allowing him to animate avatars that act as extensions of himself. He eschews scripts, relying on an intuitive, “writing‑like” process, and spends half his time solving coding problems before the film materializes. The Venice installation incorporates oversized figures, audience seating, and phone‑charging stations to make viewers feel like small puppets within the work’s scale.

Curator Raphael and collaborators recount how the partnership began through a chance biennial research, leading to a six‑month intensive co‑creation phase in Taiwan and Venice. Notable remarks highlight Yi‑Fan’s “calm exterior” contrasted with his fragmented, detail‑rich narratives, and his reflection on the impact of subscription‑based software on artistic autonomy.

The project illustrates how emerging technologies reshape contemporary art production, blurring lines between painterly training, video art, and game‑engine animation. For the Taiwanese cultural agenda, the high‑visibility Venice venue amplifies the nation’s artistic presence on the global stage, while the immersive, tech‑infused environment resonates with a generation raised on the internet.

Original Description

Taiwan presents “Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan” as its Collateral Event at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), the exhibition runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026, at the historic Palazzo delle Prigioni in Venice. Artist Li Yi-Fan and curator Raphael Fonseca, both shaped by the rise of the internet, explore the melancholy induced by prolonged screen use and the anxieties of the digital age, including information overload and rapid AI development. The presentation features a new 60-minute video work centered on an “eyeball” returning home, accompanied by two smaller video pieces and large-scale 3D-printed sculptures of body parts that serve as both installation elements and seating. Drawing on Li’s practice of digital puppetry and real-time game engines, the immersive installation blurs boundaries between physical space, virtual imagery, and human perception. The project connects contemporary technological concerns with historical references such as Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I. Public programs and a new bilingual artist book will accompany the exhibition.

Taiwan in Venice 2026: Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan. TFAM of Taiwan Collateral Event at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Exhibition walkthrough, impressions from the opening, and interviews with the artist Li Yi-Fan and the curator Raphael Fonseca. Venice (Italy), May 7, 2026.

00:00 - Intro

00:42 - Title and content of the exhibition

01:44 - Li Yi-Fan Biography

02:34 - The elements of the exhibition

03:20 - First encounter with Li Yi-Fan and his work

04:23 - The development of the exhibition in Venice

05:52 - Collaborating on the exhibition

07:21 - Intermezzo

08:44 - Training as a painter

09:44 - Most impressive aspect of Li Yi-Fan’s work

10:35 - Learning as important part of the artistic practice

11:30 - Visitors take away from the exhibition

12:17 - Outlook

12:56 - Impact for Taiwanese artists

13:56 - Representing Taiwan in Venice

14:54 - Outro

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