From January to March 2026, Xiang Li’s silk scrolls hung across several floors of LabCentral, a biotech building in Kendall Square. This page is for companies planning art for offices, labs and lobbies, and for the consultants and rental programs who place it: what the work is, how it has been installed, and the practical details.
Gallery 1832 brings a local artist into LabCentral every three months, in a program for women artists and artists of color. For Empresses of the Ages: The Silk Legacy of Xiang Li, monumental silk scrolls and portrait originals hung along corridors, beside glass-walled labs and in shared spaces, installed around elevators, security checkpoints and people at work. Scientists told us the paintings brought joy and calm into their day. At the close, each silk was unhooked, rolled and tied for transport.
January – March 2026
“Linking science, art, and community.”
Photographs: Xiang Li Art Fei’s account of the installation →
Xiang Li 李湘 spent thirty-seven years in the Forbidden City’s painting studio, copying and restoring the imperial collection. She paints on silk in ground mineral pigment; her empresses, celestial figures and guardians run from portrait size to scrolls four meters long.
Her daughter, Fei Wu, is the studio’s producer. She plans each installation with the building’s facilities or program staff, handles the logistics, and leads the talks and receptions, translating for her mother, who is there to meet the people who work in the building.
Each collection page lists every painting with its story.
Companies and programs have used one of these or combined them.
A three- to twelve-month show in corridors, lobbies and shared spaces, the length most corporate rental and gallery programs run. LabCentral’s ran three months.
Monumental silk scrolls, two to four meters long, hung on rods or rail systems for a long wall, an atrium or a reception area. Planned with the building’s facilities team.
Silk fades in daylight, so sunny or busy walls take stretched or framed canvas prints of the same paintings, up to 24 × 36 and 20 × 40 inches.
An evening for staff, tenants or invited guests. Fei Wu leads the talk and the walk-through and translates for Xiang Li, who meets the guests.
What a consultant, a corporate art program or a building’s facilities team usually asks first.
Before LabCentral: a commission for one company’s offices, and a window display in a downtown Worcester building.
Between 2013 and 2014 Xiang Li painted over two hundred works, large and small, for a single office floor: dragon designs and Chinese landscapes for the conference rooms and private offices, small paintings (xiao pin 小品) along the hallways. She also directed how they were arranged and hung.
2013 – 2014
Read the story →
Empress paintings and silks in a downtown window display, seen by everyone walking past after dark.
October 2024
Venues that have hosted the work
For an inventory with dimensions, images for a proposal, or to talk through a space, write to the studio. Fei Wu produces the studio’s installations and will answer.
Contact the studio Fei Wu · Producer and speaker · Xiang Li’s daughter
xiangliart@gmail.com
