Li Hui photographs the boundary between waking and dreaming—that thin, permeable line where the everyday begins to shimmer with something deeper, something half-remembered. Her series The Crack into Sleep Is the Crack into Dreaming places subjects within the ordinary and waits for the subtle details and emotions that hint at what lies beneath the surface.
"These cracks act as portals to the subconscious," the artist writes, "where distance and closeness exist in tension, creating an intimate yet distant feeling." The images move between sharp focus and soft dissolution, capturing moments that feel suspended—neither fully present nor entirely absent. Some employ double-exposure, layering memories and moments into single frames that resonate like flashes from the past, quiet echoes in the corners of perception.
Li Hui’s broader practice explores the boundaries between the seen and the unseen, the real and the imagined. Her first book, After The Wind, delves into the quiet beauty of nature’s hidden spaces, while No Word From Above focuses on the small, often overlooked details of the natural world—those subtle, invisible forces that shape our lives without announcement. A finalist for Red Hook Labs New Artists II, her work has been exhibited internationally.
What holds these images together is not narrative but atmosphere—a meditative quality that invites the viewer to pause and engage with the often unnoticed beauty and mystery of everyday existence. The crack into sleep, Li Hui suggests, is also the crack into seeing: a threshold where the conscious mind releases its grip and the world reveals itself differently.
