Alli Conrad (b.1995) is a Chinese-American contemporary artist living and working in Los Angeles, California specializing in figurative surreal oil paintings.
Conrad’s work actively explores historic eras in the form of paintings through the lens of modern society. Her body of work uses both female and male subjects incorporating a blend of pop culture and contemporary life to represent identity, time and culture - prizing color and symbolism to embody emotion and mood. She confronts the past to give meaning to the present that transports through the evolution of cultural trends that portray the past as not fixed and unchanged, but as connected to the present moment. Femininity and culture play as key themes across her works through absent features as well as blank and void human-like figures that have been formed by her own imagination, experiences, and long periods of reflection - resulting in the contemporary timeless notion that all that any of us want is to be “seen”. She leaves the viewer to look within themselves and identify who they really are, keeping above all “to thine own self be true”. Through the absence of her faceless characters, detailed close ups, and snippets of human forms, Conrad conveys an endless possibility of narratives and an empty page for one to write their own language.