Between Body and Matter: A Conversation with Artist Li Ramet
In Ibiza, Li Ramet has built a practice that exists in the spaces between body and matter, gesture and stillness, the visible and the deeply felt.
Born in San Juan, Argentina, and trained across disciplines from fine arts to art therapy and photography, Li approaches creation as an act of profound listening, allowing materials themselves to become collaborators in her ongoing exploration of transformation and presence.
Moving fluidly between performance, installation, painting, sculpture, and photography, Li treats each medium not as a separate language but as different registers within a single conversation, one concerned with density and subtlety, with how the body negotiates space, and how energy moves through both physical and conceptual realms. Whether working with found materials or creating site-specific installations, she brings a sensibility that is at once sensual and contemplative, rooted in both rigorous formal training and an intuitive understanding of how art can map the invisible architectures of human experience.
As she prepares to release her first book this spring, a three-year collaborative project with curators, collectors, and thinkers, Li stands at a compelling juncture in her career. Her exhibitions reveal an artist increasingly interested in the threads that connect her diverse practices, and in the possibilities that emerge when we allow materials, bodies, and spaces to speak on their own terms.
Li, you mention that your work emerges from a dialogue between body, matter, energy, and space. Can you walk me through how this dialogue unfolds in practice?
In most cases, the process begins with the body. I experience a physical or energetic call that moves me into practice, an impulse that precedes thought. That said, materials also have their own agency. There are moments, especially when starting a new series, where a material clearly guides the beginning, shaping the direction before any conceptual structure is in place. It is always a reciprocal conversation rather than a fixed hierarchy. For me, creation is never a purely mental act. In most cases, it begins in the body, I experience a physical or energetic call that moves me into practice; like a sensation, or a subtle inner disturbance that asks to be listened. I often start by moving, preparing colors, arranging materials on the floor, or simply spending time in the space until something shifts. This bodily attunement allows me to enter a receptive state where energy and space become active participants in the process. At the same time, materials carry their own intelligence and memory. There are moments, especially when starting a new series, where a material clearly guides the beginning, shaping the direction before any conceptual structure is in place. It is always a conversation. A certain fabric, pigment, or surface will insist on being used, guiding my gestures and decisions. Rather than imposing an idea onto the material, I try to remain in dialogue with it, allowing the work to emerge from the tension and harmony. In this sense, the practice becomes a continuous negotiation between inner perception and outer matter, where meaning emerge little by little through presence.
You describe materials as “living elements” that guide the narrative. Can you share an example of a time when a material surprised you or took your work in an unexpected direction?
I experience each material as carrying its own energy and intelligence. There are moments, especially when I feel suspended or uncertain within a series; when I stop trying to decide and instead listen or observe. In those moments, a specific material seems to take over, offering a new direction that resolves the tension. Often, it is precisely through this surrender that the series finds its form and coherence.
You work with both found and repurposed materials. What draws you to objects that have already lived another life?
I’m deeply drawn to materials shaped by time. A piece of wood sculpted by water, wind, or sand already carries a history and later on maybe becomes part of a sculptural or installation ensemble. Other times, it’s something deeply personal; like a petticoat belonging to my grandmother; chosen for the story it holds or the texture of the fabric. These elements become intimate fragments within my tapestries, carrying memory forward in a quiet, tactile way.
Who are the artists, thinkers, or traditions that have most shaped your approach to making?
My influences come from many fields and periods. Artists such as Rosalba Carriera Louise Bourgeois, Nancy Spero, Hilma af Klint, Rebecca Horn, Graciela Iturbide, Sigmar Polke, Judy Chicago and Camille Claudell, have deeply shaped my understanding of body and memory.
I’m equally influenced by thinkers, poets and philosophies: Marcus Aurelius, Oliverio Girondo, Julio Cortázar, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Carlos Castaneda and Taoism; as well as by movement and performance, particularly the work of Isadora Duncan, Valie Export, Ana Mendieta.
Three film directors that blew my mind Emir Kusturica, Agnès Varda and Stanley Kubrick. These references form a constellation rather than a linear lineage.
Living and working in Ibiza, how does the specific energy and landscape of the island or its people influence your creative process?
Ibiza influences my work in subtle and profound ways. The island carries a strong feminine and elemental energy that infused my practice. Its light, landscapes, and natural rhythms shape how I work; while its multicultural, bohemian, and free-spirited community, marked by eccentricity, and a certain glamour, creates an atmosphere of openness and possibility that continually feeds my imagination.
How have recent global shifts, whether social, environmental, or technological affected the questions you're asking in your work?
The past years have intensified my awareness of vulnerability, both personal and collective. Witnessing ecological crises, social fragmentation, and the acceleration of digital life has created a sense of emotional saturation, at times this produces frustration or a feeling of impotence, as if individual gestures are too small in the face of systemic issues. These emotions are not external to my work; they form its raw material. Rather than offering answers or solutions, my practice has become a space for metabolizing these tensions. Through slowness, repetition, and attention, I allow difficult emotions to pass through the work and transform into something more porous and open. The act of creating becomes an alchemical process; transmuting pressure and uncertainty into gestures of liberation. release and subtle reorientation. The work is not intended to create a bubble separate from reality. Instead, it seeks to open cracks within it, proposing other ways of sensing and feeling the world as it is. By creating spaces of presence, offering a moment of breathing within the overwhelming conditions of contemporary life, where alternative imaginative possibilities can begin to emerge; hoping that allows others to recognize their own experiences reflected back to them, not as an escape, but as an invitation to inhabit reality differently; to sense that new worlds can be generated from within this one.
The past few years have changed how we think about bodies, presence, and gathering. Has this shifted your approach to performance or installation?
Absolutely. These shifts made me even more attentive to presence and shared space, while also sharpening my sense of responsibility toward all forms of life. My approach to performance and installation increasingly reflects a desire to rethink our relationship with nature and to recognize the irregular, resilient intelligence of the world we inhabit. The work becomes a space for reflecting on fundamental questions: what defines life, how existence might appear without humanity, and how our understanding of human nature is evolving. I aim to reveal the invisible dynamics that arise when bodies gather—physically or energetically—and to question the blindness that often separates us from our deeper nature and our place within the living world.
Photos by Clarissa Sofia, Ana G.Hernando, Li Ramet.
