Lily Li is a composer-performer and music theatre maker working between Switzerland and Germany. Her practice brings together voice, movement, objects, video, electronics and installation to create poetic and often quietly surreal stage worlds.
At the centre of her work are questions of memory, migration, belonging and the inner lives we carry across places and relationships. Rather than treating these themes as documentary subjects, Li approaches them through sensorial and theatrical forms: a voice, a gesture, a toy, a domestic object or a moving image can become a carrier of memory and emotional meaning.
Childlike imagination plays an important role in her artistic language. Li is interested in the point where play, tenderness and wonder meet the complexities of adult life — loneliness, displacement, attachment, disappearance and the search for home. Her works move between experimental music theatre, performance and installation, often dissolving the boundaries between concert, theatre and visual composition.
Li’s background spans Composition at Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB), Community Music at the University of York, and Music Pedagogy with a focus on Eurythmics and Performance at HKB. Alongside her artistic practice, she develops participatory and educational projects for children, older adults and diverse communities, with experience across China, Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland.
Beyond that, she loves traveling, filming and writing. She especially enjoys sitting by the sea with tea, writing and savoring her little moments of hygge.
