Maia Ruth Lee | Human Life in Motion
What does it mean to memorialise something transient?
For Colorado-based artist Maia Ruth Lee’s first UK solo exhibition beginning on the Spring Equinox, we imagine the gallery as a worldly and spiritual centre. The presentation will explore human life in motion and feature objects as offerings from different exhibitors.
In Gallery 1, the five new sculptures that Lee will make at Primary will become part of her Bondage Baggage (2018 – present) series. The sculptures are intricate prototypes of luggage seen arriving at the Kathmandu International Airport, often owned by Nepali migrant labour workers from the Middle East, South and East Asia. They are often wrapped and bound in quotidian materials: cardboard, rope, textiles, and tape. The luggage is bound in ways that are difficult to tamper with, concealed and enforced by techniques that are characteristically unique. The masking of its contents would pose a threat to any Western standards of security measures and customs—the hand-woven luggage becomes remarkable objects that are, by design, an embodiment of anti-establishment and anti-imperial gestures. Blending the installation with traditions of public offerings, as seen in Korean jesa or at religious sites such as Buddhist monasteries within Nepal, Primary and Lee will invite our community to present luggage and other personal offerings alongside her sculptures.
Image: Reece Straw