These portraits emerge from the fragile territory where memory lingers like perfume upon the skin. Created through conversations with immigrants, the series traces lives not through faces alone, but through the objects, scents, and fragments of stories that accompany them across borders. Photographs become portals to distant moments, shaped by personal histories and cultural landscapes. From the aromas woven into these recollections, bespoke perfumes are composed by me, while new images are created.
Keni Li is a China-born photographer and researcher based in Glasgow, currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Glasgow. She holds an MSc in Modern and Contemporary Art: History, Curating and Criticism from the University of Edinburgh.Her recent book chapter, “Reinventing Contemporary Exhibition Space: Novels, Domestic Space, and Cinematic Cartography,” appears in Exhibition Matters: Contemporary Displays and Exhibition-Making Practices (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026). Her solo exhibition Fluid Memory: Wings (Glasgow, 2026), held at SaltSpace Gallery and accompanied by an artist’s photobook.
