Jiaxin Li (He/Him) is a Chinese artist and practice-based PhD candidate in the Fine Art Department at Edinburgh College of Art. He also completed his undergraduate and master's degrees at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, China.

His research is grounded in the context of urban development and renewal in China over the past 40 years of reform and opening up. Contemporary urbanization has progressed at an unprecedented pace. China's urban and rural spaces have undergone dramatic transformations: old city areas have been leveled, high-rises have sprung up, and infrastructure has expanded continuously. Numerous urban villages (a type of informal housing) have become key types and projects for demolition or redevelopment in the urban process.

His study argues that, through the practice of artistic visual research, urban ruins are not only the endpoint of memory but can also be seen as a potential starting point for rewriting urban space and social relations. By reinterpreting and renarrating these ruins, it can provide an opportunity for the underprivileged to reconstruct their subjectivity, reveal the mechanisms of spatial violence, and explore the possibilities of urban space. Ruins are not merely "decay" or "remnants," but a critical spatial phenomenon and material language. They bear witness to the ruptures and contradictions in urban spatial production, reveal the social costs behind modernization, and provide a unique perspective for rethinking "space, memory, and social critique." His research stance is to take Chinese urban architectural ruins as the object of study, viewing them as spatial and material carriers of social memory and cultural expression. Combining artistic practice methods, he explores how ruin materials can become an important entry point for understanding and recording the contemporary urban process in China.