Artist Gao Zhenpeng’s paper installation Super Star No 1is on show at the Today Art Museum in Beijing on July 25, 2020. [Photo by Yang Xiaoyu/chinadaily.com.cn]

However, reviving China's profound paper tradition has been only part of the young curator's aspiration.

"I don't know what else paper can do, nor do I know what it cannot do," said Li, who heads the country's first paper art institute established in 2017 by Jilin Normal University in Changchun, in Northeast China's Jilin province.

Li is the brains behind building the China Paper Art Museum in his university. Now in trial operation, the 3,200-square-meter venue houses over 3,000 types of ancient and modern paper, displays hundreds of traditional and contemporary paper artworks, and holds extensive literature on paper-making and paper art.