Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan is the project selected to represent Taiwan as an official Collateral Event at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2026. Curated by Raphael Fonseca and featuring the artist Li Yi-Fan, the project is promoted and organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. It is hosted at Taiwan’s customary Venice venue, the Palazzo delle Prigioni. The venue is the former Serenissima‘s penitentiary, and it is just steps away from St. Mark’s Square. This great Palazzo is connected to the Doge’s Palace by the world-famous Bridge of Sighs.
The exhibition consists primarily of a video projected onto a large LED screen in the center of the main hall and a group of large-scale 3D-printed sculptures that reproduce parts of the video protagonist’s body.
The key element is undoubtedly the video: an incredibly rich work, both visually and in terms of the themes it explores.
As curator Raphael Fonseca says, quoting Hippocrates of Kos: “Vita brevis, ars longa“, life is short, knowledge long. Indeed, Li Yi-Fan’s work is so complex and multi-layered that it allows for a vast array of possible readings, interpretations, and reflections. We will examine a few of these, fully aware that, given the very nature of the work, any attempt to cover every nuance would likely remain incomplete.
The central threads of this postmodern narrative are irony and the ambiguity surrounding what is shown and said by the characters. It is precisely this that broadens the spectrum of possible interpretations and makes the work so compelling.
Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan — The journey of an eye
The first thing that we see watching the video is Palazzo delle Prigioni, which is thus digitally reconstructed to set the action. This marks the first ambiguous element, the first example in a long series of mise en abyme, recursive structures that contain themselves: the viewer is actually inside the Palazzo delle Prigioni watching a video set within the Palazzo itself.
Inside this virtual Palazzo, there is a humanoid character who moves with a disjointed gait and speaks in a jerky manner, often addressing the audience directly. This puppet-character speaks openly about what we are about to see: the journey of an eye.
The eye’s journey is, obviously, both a physical and a metaphorical one.
The video features a mini-puppet portraying an eye (placed on his head) that moves and interacts with other puppets representing the body’s other organs. But there is more: the main puppet-character tells us about the eye’s journey to reach the brain. Ultimately, we might interpret this journey as a process of understanding the world, given that human beings often perceive and comprehend the world through the eye-brain system.
So, what kind of world are we talking about?
Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan — Real World | Virtual World | Fake World
The world inhabited by the puppet-character is a “virtual” one, a world created by computer. It is not the “real” world, the one where the spectator exists.
But today the virtual/real dichotomy, like the one in “The Matrix“, is no longer sufficient to explain the contemporary world.
We cite “The Matrix” for a reason. Li Yi-Fan also references the 1999 cult film in the publication accompanying the exhibition, discussing it in relation to another of his works, “important_message.mp4“. As the artist highlights, in the movie, when Neo exclaims, “This is not real!”, Morpheus replies by asking, “What is real?”. Today, Morpheus’s question is more relevant than ever.
The world of “The Matrix” was divided into the “virtual” and the “real,” and most characters spent their entire (mental) existence in one or the other. Even for protagonists like Neo or Morpheus, who lived in both worlds, the virtual realm did not affect the real one, except in the event of death.
The world we are living in is no more merely divided into “virtual” and “real” (or, as originally intended, “not-virtual”). We live in a strange composite world where all virtual products are part of reality and directly influence our every day life. In addition, almost everything, every image, every message we percieve in our contemporary world could be “fake.” Not only “virtual” but deliberately “fake”, intentionally crafted to confuse the viewer.
A “fake world”, indeed, born from the union of the virtual and the real one, where the boundaries are blurred and unclear, and where “fake” is used deliberately to deceive.
The world the puppet-character speaks to us about, even ironically and evasively, is now far more complex than it was a quarter of a century ago, at the dawn of the virtual era. That is why learning to understand it is crucial.
And how could we learn to understand this strange world we’re living in?
An indirectly suggested way is to learn how to create it, or almost the virtual part of it, that is by now fully integrated in what we call the “real world”. The puppet-character looks at us from its virtual world and asks: “Do you know how to animate? […] Do you want to learn animation?“
“Animation is like magic,” it adds, while sticking cigarettes up its nose. So it’s better to learn the tricks to understand the “magic” behind what we see. One must realize that, in today’s world more than ever, “the way you see defines who you are“, as the puppet-character directly says.
Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan — The Lesson
And so, the puppet-character begins a sort of lesson on how to create animation. It’s characteristically ambiguous, ironic, and entirely non-linear, of course. There are precise technical details, such as the explanation of various 3D solid mapping techniques, alongside ironic, pop-culture elements, like references to memes, the heart of contemporary social communication.
Speaking of which, dear Li Yi-Fan: we got the references to the “normal family” and to “goo goo ga ga“. Does that mean we’re too old? Too young? Or was it just luck?
Naturally, there are also references to 3D modeling. “Which simplified version of the head do you think represents you the most?” the puppet-character asks. The irony here is biting. Are we speaking strictly about the 3D model of a head which, for obvious reasons, must be an approximation, or are we talking about a “real head” that, in today’s world, risks being oversimplified?
The answer the puppet-character gives itself is even more ambiguous: “It’s not about honesty, it’s about optimization.“ In other words: the model (or the human being?) doesn’t need to be “honest” or maximally precise; it simply needs to be optimized, useful for the task it has to perform. Optimized for its function.
Added to this, however, is a piece of advice both cryptic and shareable: “never trust a low-poly model.“ This could be interpreted as: don’t trust a head that is “too simplified.”
“In the end, it’s all about time and money,” the puppet-character finally says. Are we still talking about 3D models and computer animation, right?
Then there are references to AI and its world, and to the controversies surrounding its rapid development in recent years. For instance, the video discusses how AI systems are trained using vast amounts of material previously created, and one can sense the possible doubts regarding the use of AI in creative works. The puppet-character pokes fun at the situation by clearly using AI to make a scene in the video, openly admitting it while simultaneously apologizing for doing so.
And then there are countless other jokes, scenes, and puppet-characters manipulating other-puppet characters in a persistent mise en abyme that concludes without ever truly ending: the video finishes exactly where it begins, in an endless loop.
Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan — The Title
As the viewing ends and the loop begins again, we reflect on the exhibition’s title: Screen Melancholy.
These two words, whether considered individually or together, invite a complex line of thought, as expected.
“Melancholy” is a term with a long history in Western culture. The Greeks, and later the Romans, viewed it as a form of profound sadness, listlessness, and anguish. Ultimately, something not unlike the modern concept of depression. It lacks a fixed, definitive meaning, and its inherent ambiguity has long been expressed in art history through works ranging from Albrecht Dürer’s celebrated engraving “Melencolia I” to Lars von Trier’s film “Melancholia“.
This feeling of sadness, impotence (and all the other nuances) is associated with the “screen.” The concept of “screen” is linked to the concept of “window,” understood as an “opening” through which we can connect with the world, starting with our eyes, which are our first “windows.” The Italian Renaissance artist Leon Battista Alberti had already explored the same semantic field with his “painting as a window,” as the exhibition curator reminds us. And it’s a concept that remains incredibly familiar to us today, considering that work on a computer, for example, is managed through “windows.”
We are so inundated with what we can see through our smartphones and computer screens, the exhibition’s title seems to suggest, that we no longer have the will to go beyond that. But is that all? Faced with such a vast, complex, endless world, is melancholy the only emotional response we can have?
The curator Raphael Foseca states to “embrace the melancholia of this condition and prepare for our existences to become as flattened as a screen“. And he adds: “There’s no turning back“.
As always, and especially in this exhibition, it is probably not definitely said.
It’s not all doomscrolling and brain rot, even though a small mobile phone screen is embedded in the puppet’s 3D head, in the second hall. Leaving the exhibition, the memory of the art work and its complex nuances leaves us feeling overwhelmed, but also, in a way, exhilarated. The experience is stimulating. And perhaps, to savor what we’ve just seen a little longer and shake off the melancholy, it’s worth stepping away from the screen, at least for a while.
Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan | Collateral Event Biennale Arte 2026
Curator: Raphael Fonseca
Exhibitor: Li Yi-Fan
Venue: Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209
09.05 – 22.11.2026
Free entrance
Discover: www.taiwaninvenice.org/2026
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