Li Ning (together with his collective “Lingyun Flame”) was born in 1972 in Jinan, Shandong, China.

He works across multiple roles as an experimental theater and film director, body-based performance artist, director of photography, editor, and curator of site-specific projects.

Li graduated from the Fine Arts Education Department of Shandong University of Arts, with additional studies in sculpture.

In 1997, he founded the “Lingyun Flame Physical Guerrilla Group,” and for many years has carried out cutting-edge explorations in physical theater and film.

As a theater artist, he has been invited to perform, screen work, and give talks at festivals such as JULIDANS in Amsterdam, the CULTURESCAPES Festival in Switzerland, and others. He has participated in devising work with the French situational theater company Ilimitrof Company, and has led the Lingyun Flame Physical Guerrilla Group on touring performances at the Avignon Festival, the Aurillac Festival of Street Arts, the Gent Arts Festival in Belgium, the Tokyo Festival, the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, the New York “Innovative China” Festival, the Beijing International Youth Theater Festival, the Shenzhen–Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, the Dashanzi Arts Festival in Beijing, and many other events.

As a contemporary practitioner of body-based education, he emphasizes the development and systematization of training methods. Drawing on his own background in visual art, he created the performance and training course “Body Sketching and Re-Sketching.” For many years he has actively carried out workshops in universities and communities across different regions, building a bridge between ordinary people and contemporary art, and helping to enhance participants’ physical–mental creativity and aesthetic awareness.

He has been invited by institutions such as New York University (NYU), the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Hubei Institute of Fine Arts, China Academy of Art, Shandong University, and others to give lectures or teach longer-term courses, and has served as artistic advisor for graduation presentations in fashion design and new media.

As an image-maker, he has been selected for and awarded at multiple international film festivals. Representative works such as TAPE and Untitled-3 have been collected by university libraries, art museums, and other museums in Europe and North America. He has received support from multiple foundations to complete his films, including the DOEN Foundation in the Netherlands (which supported Li Ning for three consecutive years in 2006, 2007, and 2008), the EU cultural project “Chin-A-Moves,” as well as the Indie Cinema Fund for Chinese independent film, the Goethe-Institut, and others.

As a curator, he has initiated and run platforms for rural and community-based art such as the Fangyu ART Festival in Jinan, the Laiwu International Factory Theatre Festival, and the Qichangcheng Rural Arts Festival.

His core belief is: “Space is not merely a stage on which people perform. It is itself a work.”

His ideal is: “To let theater once again become a form of public entertainment in everyday life.”

He has been called “the initiator of public theater.”