Los Angelas-based multi-media artist Ahree Lee presents Sum > Parts, an exhibition of recent video work, from Saturday, July 7 through Saturday, July 28 2018. Lee and artist Ariel Wood, who has a concurrent solo exhibition, will present artist talks on Saturday, July 7, 6-7pm, including a community photo quilt workshop that will become part of Lee's exhibition. An opening reception will follow from 7-9pm. Exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Lee will be creating a new, collaborative work with members of the public at the family-friendly artist talk/workshop at the beginning of the opening. Inspired by the bojagi, a traditional Korean quilt-like textile, she invites everyone to bring many photos of family and friends to piece together into a collective photo quilt of the Madison community. The resulting piece will be exhibited in the gallery through the duration of the exhibition.
Exhibition Statement
With parallel backgrounds in English literature and graphic design, I make work that is a composite of poetry and narrative, relying on technology and visual storytelling. I use an interdisciplinary approach that both clarifies and complicates notions of identity and personal narrative.
As a child of Korean immigrants yet raised distinctively American, I look to the past and across distances to investigate what constitutes individual or collective identity in an increasingly diasporic, culturally alienated and fractured world. I use algorithms, either through code or methodically applied analogue processes, to transform visual imagery like portrait photos and home movies.
I explore the tension between fragments and the whole through these questions: How do genetic and physical components make up a person? How do past events combine to make a personal narrative? How do individuals become part of a group? The resulting videos and interactive installations harken back to the aesthetic of home movies or a family slide show presentation, complicating nostalgia for the past.
Scraps of home movies are patched together to make a quilt-like fabric of family memories. Vertical slices of portrait photographs evoke the snippets of genetic code that are spliced together to create the DNA of each individual person. By making the sum greater than its parts, I reinforce the interconnectedness and commonality among all humans.
