Wednesday, July 25, 2007

There are so many reasons, they are all the same


The Hip Hop Project (1), 2001

The Hispanic Project (1)

The Ohio Project (8)

#7 from The Skateboarders Project

#4 from The Yuppie Project

The Ohio Project (7)

Nikki S. Lee, ‘The Wedding (3)

aka Nikki S. Lee



"Who is the real Nikki S. Lee, her admirers would like to know. a.k.a. Nikki S. Lee won't answer this question. What she started in her photos, she carries to an extreme in this clever, imaginative, and exceedingly humorous documentary film: a constant play of identities. The filmmaker so cryptically includes the art business, the jet set, the film world in her self-presentation, that even reality becomes unreal, and in the seemingly documentary moments when the artist speaks seriously about herself, you suspect it's reality's last hold. That's a mistake. Because no certainty remains unshaken in this work."

-Christoph Terhechte



The artist without an identity comes to the city without an image tomorrow July 26th for a screening of her new film aka Nikki S. Lee at 7:00pm at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The museum is free, so use it as an excuse to check out the new Chaney the Oil Man showcase of the best of contemporary Asian art before taking in the film. The artist herself will be there to introduce the film and speak about her work. In her photographs and films the stereotypes so essential to the sculptural works in the gallery are dashed through an American alchemy. Lee's demonstrations of the systematic and environmental roots of identity dash not only bigoted Americana, but also the identity politics at play in the porcelain vases of Mao's face or monstrous red plastic dinosaurs housed in the galleries above the theater.

I wonder if the Red Hot show will travel?

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