“The centerpiece of Lee’s installation is a string of porcelain lanterns suspended from the ceiling. By swapping the traditional lantern material of paper or silk for ceramic, Lee made the lanterns, which are symbolic of hopeful wishes for the future, both more permanent and more fragile in their objecthood. The delicacy and enduring quality of the lanterns mirror the histories and hopes of Cantonese immigrants depicted in the photocollage on the wall behind the lanterns. With images from the Bancroft Library collections, community, and online archives, mixed with photographs of Lee’s own family, it is impossible to determine which images come from each source––a construction that mirrors Lee’s experience of finding family histories so much like their own in the archive. The lantern silhouette form of the collage is printed on silk that moves gently behind the hanging sculpture bringing the histories Lee mines into the present while looking forward to the potential in their reimagining.” -Claire Frost for the Berkeley Art Museum, 2022
Celestial Beings, Celestial Bodies
2022
Porcelain, glaze, mother-of-Pearl, artist’s blood, organza silk, ink, bamboo, mulberry paper