Wei Li and Emily Promise Allison | Soft Duet

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Wei Li, “Lip Stick,” 2024

digital print on paper, edition of 5, 30” X 24" (courtesy of the Gallery)

VIVIANEART is pleased to present Soft Duet, the 10th edition of our annual invitational exhibition, Hand Pic’d. With this exhibition we continue a precedent of celebrating emerging artists within the local Calgary arts community. It has been an honor and a privilege to host this exhibition for the past ten years.

Soft Duet celebrates the distinct and powerful voices of two artists, Wei Li and Emily Promise Allison. Through each of their respective practices they explore themes of womanhood and femininity. Using their own distinct approach; Allison, traditional photography and Li, Digital Art Creation, both add to a dialogue about beauty with a nod to surrealism and the grotesque.

Emily Promise Allison is a conceptual artist using photography and performance to create surreal and metaphysical work that celebrates sensuality, mischief, and magic. Using her own body and an exquisite attention to light she creates evocative images. Her work has been presented and collected in Europe and North America. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art and the Alberta University of the Arts; receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction in Sculpture in 2015. In 2023 she was awarded the inaugural Canadian Master Artist Residency by the La Napoule Art Foundation in the South of France, and in 2025 she will set sail on international waters with The Arctic Circle expeditionary residency program.

Wei Li is a Chinese Canadian artist whose experience of being an immigrant to Canada provides her with crucial inspiration in her practice. Initially a painter, she has expanded her practice to the digital medium.  The gestures in her works are symbolic and metaphoric,” I use the body/skin as material to activate social commentary on identity, diaspora, femininity, motherhood, and popular culture”. Li completed her BFA (with Distinction) from the University of Alberta in 2017 and since has participated in shows/residencies across Canada and the United States. Li was a finalist in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition (2017), and her work was shown at the National Gallery of Canada. She participated in the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation artist residency in 2021 in the US. She was the recipient of the national Emerging Digital Artist Award in 2022. In 2024 Li was featured in the project space at The Esker Foundation.