Tzung-Hui Lauren Lee

Lee’s practice is rooted in a respect for materials and the history they carry. For her works on paper, for example, Lee often makes the paper herself, pulping and panning a wide variety of fibres, from cotton and hemp to kozu. Lee is interested in how these fibres contain genealogical traces of their ancestors and how, accordingly, they can be used by the artist to explore her own ancestry. Born in Johannesburg, Lee’s mother and father hailed from Beijing andTaiwan, respectively, and the material cultures as well as spiritual philosophies have served as major inspirations. As means to grapple with her identity between these two tensioned states, her work had been in a flux of decolonial practices and the orient, practicing folk culture techniques to ease the agitation of diaspora within a post-apartheid society.

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Notably, the material to which she returns most often is sumi ink. Sumi ink is made by mixing soot – specifically, that which was burnt in prayers – with animal hide to create an ink stick. This process has been used to make the ink used by calligraphers in China from as early as the Shang dynasty (11th century BC).This spiritual and historical weight lends meaning to Lee’s compositions, which are often ethereal and abstract. Lee calls it “physically drawing with meaning”as a means of respecting the tradition of calligraphic practice to ease her feelings related to diaspora, she draws from this practice with a respect and intuition, seen through her marks.

Lee analyses images she takes translating them to drawing, embossing, or etching.These renderings often resemble clouds. Clouds, says Lee, are an embodiment of Qi, the vital force that, according to Chinese cosmology, flows through all living things. Qi can also be translated as vapour, breath, or air – reflecting the subtle but nevertheless dynamic movement of Lee’s compositions, a process she describes as “embodying your lived experience, which transitions through your body to your hand that depicts the world you represent or seek – that is creativity to me.”