When does fan art become fine art? That is a question close to the heart of Shuang Li, a Chinese artist whose work is inspired by her favourite band, My Chemical Romance (MCR). Although Li’s work has little in common with the sketches of idols that define fan art, her new show at the Swiss Institute in New York leaves no doubt she is making reference to MCR, the American emo group who broke through to the mainstream with their second album, , in 2004. The centrepiece of the major exhibition is an installation called .
It features a heart-shaped working fountain with images of screaming fans at MCR concerts projected from above. An audio recording of an excited audience at the start of an MCR concert plays on a loop, stopping abruptly at the point when the band appear on stage, and starting again after a pause. It is a symbol of fans’ longing for unobtainable objects of desire, Li says.
The silence that follows the appearance of the performers in the projection splits the world of the screaming and cheering fans from that of the band. The work is a celebration of the world that fans create for themselves in the absence of their idols. “There wasn’t even a shopping mall to hang out in.
So I would spend a lot of time online, just reading, as a teenager,” she says on the rooftop of the Swiss Institute, a non-profit contemporary art venue in Lower Manhattan. “I felt I was more alive when I was online playing video games and reading. All these different media were makin.