Li Yi-fan is turning heads in Italy, where his bizarre take on the digital self-portrait represents Taiwan at the 61st edition of the Venice Biennale.The video artist’s digital avatar – or “puppet”, as Li calls it – is impossible to unsee. It is naked – genitals obscured – with plaster-like skin, and is hairless and cloudy-eyed. It is not just physically crude but verbally vulgar and provocative.This abrasive persona may well be Taiwan’s answer to other groundbreaking animated avatars, such as the futuristic clones by Lu Yang and Wong Ping’s childlike – yet adult in content – constructs.Li, who was born in Taipei in 1989, voices the digital gremlin, which also appeared in an earlier work at the 2023 Taipei Biennial and at the “Stay Connected: Navigating the Cloud” exhibition in Hong Kong in 2025.The mouthy avatar is letting rip inside the Palazzo delle Prigioni, a 16th century former prison in Venice. Curated by Raphael Fonseca, the Taiwan Pavilion has transformed this historic space into a gloomy playground of our collective digital anxiety.Artist Li Yi-fan (left) and curator Raphael Fonseca are behind the Taiwan collateral event at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo: courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts MuseumA ‘broken up, distorted self-portrait’