An interview with Lindy Lee
Benjamin Genocchio I would like to begin with a remark that Edward Colless made at the end of his catalogue essay on your work for the 1994 exhibition Transcultural Painting. In this text Colless suggests that your recent work forms something of two-way mirror in which we can view fragments of a fleeting self-portrait alongside our own distorted reflection. To what extent do you see your work as exploring this site of exchange between artist and audience, self and other?
Lindy Lee This is absolutely the point of all my work. I try in some way to measure the differences between self and other, but also to understand how much of the other is no other than that which I am. I believe that there are essential points of departure between individuals and that these need to be respected and given their place. At the same time, there are fundamental similarities that need to be acknowledged. Each of us faces our own moment of birth and death and, with those moments, exactly the same questions about existence. Cultural and personal factors influence how we answer those questions but the actual processes are the same. In my work, somehow, I am trying to hold both these aspects.
I have often been overwhelmed by a sense of loss and longing when viewing your canvases. The flood of full dark colours concealing or gradually sweeping away the vestiges of an idea or image, like the fading residue of a cherished memory, leads me to the land of melancholy. Are these feelings which you attempt to express or communicate through your work?
The first twelve years of my work were concerned with notions of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline