Lily Li is a Korean-ethnic Chinese illustrator and storyteller based in New York City. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a BFA in Illustration (2025), where she was awarded the Rhodes Family Award.
Born in Beijing in 2002, Lily grew up as an ethnic minority in China’s political center, an experience that shaped her sensitivity to systems of power, injustice, and identity. Her work focuses on politically engaged narratives, often rooted in both personal memory and collective experience. Whether through comics, editorial illustration, or long-form illustrated books, she approaches storytelling with clarity, emotional depth, and a sharp critical eye.
Lily works across watercolor, acrylic, digital illustration, and mixed media on wood panels, often blending materials to match the emotional texture of each story. Her recent thesis project, Northbound, is an illustrated book that experiments with rice paper, gessoed wood, and layered mark-making to explore themes of forced migration and the myth of freedom. Her earlier comic, Justice Street, uses satire to critique structural violence and class inequality.
Lily is especially drawn to stories that address what is often silenced—displacement, rage, vulnerability—and she brings a strong narrative voice to every project she undertakes. Influenced by literary traditions as much as visual ones, she continues to develop her practice at the intersection of art and social commentary.
She is currently open to representation, freelance opportunities, commissions, and collaborations.