Dori Deng is a Chinese-British multidisciplinary artist living and working in the UK. Dedicated to the medium of projected light, Deng investigated the temporal and structural qualities of the medium and orchestrated unique compositions of light, space and time. Deng’s art practice balances order and chance — forming harmony by engineering the organic. Her lightworks offer tangible experiences with temporal immediacy. Light as an abstract medium liberated Deng’s creativity from the limit of form or scale, her lightworks ranged from sculpture, architectural installation, to staged performances. Light functions as either the object or the subject, but a sensual abstract — a tool to evoke our unaware notion connected to architectural space, further to time.

Over the past decade, Deng advanced her practice through a research-based, experimental-led manner, processed within a rigorous framework of subject-focus series. The subject matters rooted in architecture and music composition, which refer to space and time. The recent completed “Termination Series” (2015-19) was processed in dialogue with historic architecture, investigating how memory forms and translate through the physical construct. Installations were site-specifically created at Palazzo Galli Tassi in Florence, Palazzo Monti in Brescia (IT) and Alte Münze in Berlin (DE). Performances from ”Rhythm Series” (2012-18) and “Measuring Series” (2009-11) adapted the notation-based method of contemporary dance to reassemble the temporal interaction between the human body and architectural landscape. Performances commissioned by Art Night London (UK), Nuit Blanche Paris (FR), shown at ICA (UK), Southbank Centre (UK), and many more unconventional public spaces.

Deng’s sensibility to time through the medium of projected light has further extended her practice in collaboration with contemporary classical and new music. Collaborators include theatre director Netia Jones (UK), musicians Mica Levi (UK), Oliver Coates (UK), and composer Laurence Crane (UK). She has recently created her first large-scale stage installation commissioned by Opera Grand Avignon (FR), a new contemporary opera Three Lunar Seas in collaboration with composer Josephine Stephenson (UK/FR), premier in 2023, Avignon, France.