We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lily Li a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Lily, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is my fine art series Northbound. It began with a question that has never left me: is nationality real, or just a convenient lie?
In this series, I built a fictional space called Yuliu Palace—a place that feels both luxurious and decayed, suspended between past and present. To outsiders, it seems like a sanctuary for those seeking a new beginning. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Yuliu Palace is not freedom—it’s another system of control disguised as escape.
The work follows a young woman who flees her politically confined homeland to work as a waitress in this palace. She believes she has crossed into a freer world, but she soon realizes that her “new life” is only another performance within the same machinery of power. The illusion of freedom becomes more suffocating than the oppression she left behind.
Northbound was inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and by the real narratives of people trapped between borders. I wanted to show how the concept of nationality is often a fiction—one created by those who benefit from control. Behind every border and every patriotic narrative lies a structure designed to preserve inequality.
Through silence, architecture, and stillness, I tried to capture the quiet violence of that realization—the moment when you understand that the world beyond your border isn’t truly different, just differently ruled.
For me, Northbound is not only about migration or identity. It’s about awakening—the painful clarity that freedom built on falsehood is never real freedom at all.

Lily, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a New York based editorial and children’s book illustrator and fine artist whose work explores social issues and love. I create images that speak to the complexities of being human and how people navigate the contradictions between empathy and power, freedom and constraint.
I began my artistic journey during the pandemic. Those years were full of pain and uncertainty, and creating became my way to process what I was feeling. Some people write or volunteer; for me, art is my language. Illustration, in particular, felt more direct and human than fine art because it emphasizes content over form and communication over abstraction. It allows me to speak about what matters to me in a way that feels tangible and emotionally real.
I work primarily in editorial and children’s book illustration, offering commissioned and freelance visual storytelling services. I approach illustration not as decoration, but as a form of social reflection. My work bridges aesthetics with critical thought, inviting viewers to question what they see. It is never about morality; it is about people. And once art is about people, it naturally becomes about love and freedom.
I’m proud to have found a visual language that truly fits me, one that balances emotional sensitivity with social awareness. I take pride in my sense of responsibility toward society, my empathy for human experience, and my ability to translate complex themes into accessible imagery. I’m also grateful for the recognition my work has received, including the Homiens Art Prize and features by several art platforms.
What I hope viewers take away from my work is a new way of seeing, a chance to confront the human desire for love and freedom even in its most fragile forms. Even if emotions feel heavy, I never want thoughts to be confined. Through my art, I hope to remind people that awareness itself can be a form of liberation.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding part of being an artist is the ability to turn awareness into connection. Art allows me to transform emotions that might otherwise feel isolating into something that can be shared and understood. It creates a bridge between my inner world and someone else’s, even if we come from completely different places or experiences.
What moves me most is when people tell me they felt seen or comforted by my work, not because it gave them answers, but because it gave them space to feel and think. I believe art’s greatest strength lies in its capacity to make people pause, to look inward, and to recognize themselves in others.
Art also gives me freedom—not the kind defined by borders or systems, but the quiet freedom of expression and empathy. It reminds me that even in moments of powerlessness, I can still create meaning. That is my form of resistance and my form of love.
Ultimately, being an artist means constantly learning how to see the world more clearly, and to help others see it too. That clarity, that shared recognition, is what makes every struggle and uncertainty worthwhile.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My creative mission is simple yet constant—to express. I’ve always felt a strong need to translate what I see and feel into images. Expression, for me, is not just an artistic choice; it’s a way of existing. When I create, I’m not trying to please or persuade anyone. I’m trying to understand and to make sense of the world through my own language.
Through that process, I use art to reveal what often goes unseen—to question the systems that define how we live, love, and identify ourselves. I believe art can expose quiet forms of control while also reminding us of our shared humanity beneath them.
What drives me is not moral judgment but curiosity, the need to reflect on the tension between freedom and belonging. I want my work to offer a space where people can recognize that many boundaries—national, cultural, or emotional—are imagined, and that awareness itself can be a form of liberation.
At its core, my mission is expression: the courage to see truthfully and still choose empathy. That act of expressing and connecting, of turning awareness into love, is what keeps me creating.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lilili.myportfolio.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plum_li3?igsh=MW80Zmx3eHozcHRieg==
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/lily-li-713b022bb