Elay Li was born on September 18, 1985 in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan. In 2002 he started to study at Nakhchivan State University. After he graduated from the university, In 2007, he was accepted to the Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts. He graduated in 2010. In these years, he was making researches on refraction of the light in his paintings. In 2013, he decided to go to Europe for higher education. The same year, he started his master education in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. He graduated in 2017.

His first personal exhibition was held in the studio of Piero Manzoni in 2019 . At the same year, His second personal exhibition opened in Palazzo Fondi in Napoli. His main painting destination is, keeping figurative forms at the border of invisible and to give a shape to the rays of light with traces of brush. Very spesific feature we can observe from the paintings of him, mostly semitones, soft colors which are engraved with brush and those glitters of brush traces create shapes, portraits, bodies, objects on the monochrome color. In 2020 his paintings exhibited in the Antonio Bataglia Gallery where many of his paintings was collected. During the selections for the Florence Biennale 2021, his painting style attracted the art curators and his painting got high vote from the organizers and art curators at the exhibition. At the same time, his another blue monochrome painting, was selected for the exhibition of "Paratissima" group show in Torino and won an award on painting. Besides the descriptive research of the figure with refraction of the light, his researches take it to the new destination with introspective description.