Gallery Where presented Lei Lei's project "Weekend and Weekdays" at the tenth edition of PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, showing his visual poetics rooted in family archives through the video installation "Weekend" and the "Movement" series. Drawing from found images of human movements and poses collected by his father in old magazines from the 1970s and 1980s, Lei Lei employs digital photography and parody to collage, reorganize, and edit them, creating a dynamic visual narrative full of tension. Through his distinctive "image archaeology," which diverges from traditional photographic concepts, Lei Lei invites viewers to explore the visual interplay between stillness and motion within flowing imagery and sound, reconstructing a dialogue between memory and the future.
Lei Lei’s practice is rooted in the collection and research of found objects and archival footage. Through digital filming and parody, he interweaves discarded images, oral histories, fragmented online videos, official documentaries, commercial catalogs, myths, and legends into cinematic poems. His multidisciplinary work spans moving image art, installation, film, live music performance, and theater.
His video installations have been exhibited at institutions including M+ Museum (Hong Kong), UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), Minsheng Art Museum (Beijing), Today Art Museum (Beijing), OCAT (Xi’an), OCAT (Shanghai), MOCA Pavilion (Shanghai), Star Museum (Shanghai), HOW Art Museum (Shanghai), Chengdu Art Museum (Chengdu), Xie Zilong Photography Museum (Changsha), Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (Japan), and Les Rencontres d’Arles (France), among others, with works entering major institutional collections. Additionally, his films have been featured at festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, Melbourne International Film Festival, and Hong Kong International Film Festival, receiving multiple awards.
