Traces XII
No Longer Available
Completed
2022
Medium
Watercolor on paper
Dimensions
22" x 30"
Description
My slanted eyes betray my Western tongue, and in this yellow body of mine I deeply understood the meaning of longing and belonging. That childhood dream – which I’ve held and revisited for much of my life – captures the discordant path of the immigration experience, walking as a ghost between two cultures in a lifelong pursuit of finding a home. The breadth of my practice shows a lifelong obsession with rituals and repetition; a reprieve from the anxiety of failed attempts at assimilating, and of never quite fitting in. I create constantly, almost pathologically, as a way to make sense of myself, the queer yellow body I possess, and what my individual story means within the greater narrative of migration, of othering, and of belonging. My background in laboratory research ushers in an empirical approach to investigating the materiality and precision in my practice, that is complemented with the existential urgency of growing up between cultures. I’ve always seen abstraction as reality, codified; when we try to make sense of feelings, emotions, sensations – the human experience – that cannot exist in the realm of representation, abstraction allows artists to imbue forms, shapes and compositions with meaning to translate humanness into a language. My abstraction comes from queer abstraction – a lived experience of codifying parts of my identity that could not be represented in my reality. Compositions and abstractions filled with anxiety, longing, sadness, and joy – something we call ‘han’ in Korean. My works reflect my deep anxieties about the aging body, bound by societal constructs and abstract norms, but as I create, I enter a moment that defies these concerns – a limbo where time and space are arrested. My works offer, at most, a snapshot of timeless pursuits – of dreams, legacies, and memories – captured by a body constantly in motion.
About this Artist
Timothy Lee
Timothy Hyunsoo Lee is a multidisciplinary visual artist born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in New York City. He received his B.A. in Neuroscience, Biology and Studio Art from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and his MFA in computational arts from Goldsmiths, University of London (UK). Working across mediums, and exploring universal concerns that emerged from personal experiences, Timothy’s works have been exhibited widely at venues such as the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (Washington DC), the Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL), the Studio Museum (New York), The Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University (New York), The National YoungArts Foundation Gallery (Miami, FL) and La Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain). He has done public art projects with the MTA Arts & Design and for the 2018 India Art Fair’s ARTPROJECTS program. His works are included in private and public collections around the world, including Facebook (Seattle, WA, USA), The MTA Arts…
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