Yijia Li is a painter based in Shanghai, China focusing on discovering how people connect with the world around them. She was born and grew up in Shanghai, China, attended Shanghai University and received a B.A. in Studio Art in 2012, and M.F.A. in Visual Studies (painting and drawing) from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in 2017. For Li the history of painting is important, a tool to pursue the universal, something that moves “beyond a single person’s experience and could be embodied in everyone’s life in thousands of ways. Turbulence, sorrow, contentment, they all become marks, building a story that is not yet complete, borrowing from techniques of the past to create something new, yet timeless.” -Yijia Li