Public Art Initiative Spotlight: Aaron Li-Hill's "What Is Here," 2023

Aaron Li-Hill is a Canadian visual artist currently based between London and New York, who employs painting, illustration, stenciling, and sculptural elements in his art. With a background in graffiti and mural painting and a degree in fine arts, he works in a range from smaller multiples to enormous murals that explore industrialization, scientific breakthrough, “man versus nature,” and information saturation. To create these complex images, Li-Hill draws from his mixed Chinese American cultural background and blurs the lines between disparate methodologies and approaches such as graffiti, classical figurative painting, graphic design, sculpture, action painting, and found object assemblage.

Aaron Li-Hill’s towering ten-story painted mural, "What Is Here," covers the entire side of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority’s Lyndon B. Johnson Apartments. Li-Hill and local photographer Patrick Cray joined the museum's staff team to coordinate artmaking activities and capture photographs of the residents and other members of the community. Li-Hill’s design for the mural, which was informed by these conversations and photographs, was approved by the residents in April 2023. The massive mural depicts residents of LBJ and the local community on the building's southeast facade.