Nikki S. Lee, Projects, 1997 & 1999
NIKKI S. LEE
The Tourist Project (13), 1997
From the series "Projects"
Fujiflex prints
28 1/4 x 21 1/4 inches
© Nikki S. Lee
NIKKI S. LEE
The Ohio Project (6), 1999
From the series "Projects"
Fujiflex prints
21 1/4 x 28 1/4 inches
© Nikki S. Lee
NOT ON VIEW
From 1997 to 2001, Korean-born artist Nikki S. Lee worked to immerse herself in a range of communities across the United States. The resulting “Projects” series presents the artist posing as part of 12 different subcultures. In each “Project,” Lee transforms her appearance and behavior, enacting a performance of participation in a group identity, such as “yuppy,” “punk,” or “lesbian.” She then photographs herself crossing ethnic, sexual, and class lines. The project gestures toward postmodern notions that a person is a series of multiple performances and images rather than some integral and essential self.
For The Ohio Project (6), Lee spent weeks living in a trailer park in Ohio and attempting to blend in, bleaching her hair blonde and donning clothes from Salvation Army thrift stores. In the snapshot, she lounges on a car parked outside a home, her cavalier pose suggesting familiarity and comfort in this particular niche of white American culture. Lee sprawls on the hood of the car beside a white man in blue jeans in a way that calls attention to her status as both a woman and a minority, subtly undermining her confident posture. The cheap and unedited quality of the photograph, taken with Fujiflex film, implies that it is a candid snapshot of everyday life, but it is equally apparent that Lee is fashioning and staging a persona. Among the snapshots of Lee’s “Projects,” this artwork most strongly tests the premise that identity is fluid. Despite her endeavors seamlessly to integrate, Lee’s undeniable foreignness in this context operates in jarring tension with the masculine whiteness of her surroundings.
Katie Weng, UMD ‘16
English, Art History
In this acclaimed series of work, Nikki S. Lee pictures herself posing as a member of various social scenes and cultural groups—hip-hop artists, senior citizens, skateboarders, yuppies, punks, exotic dancers, tourists, and rural white Americans. Lee transforms herself through clothing and makeup, gesture and demeanor, to integrate into each target group. Here she makes herself into the stereotype of a tourist by donning sunglasses, fanny pack, and camera bag. She performs a role in this imaginary Ohio household with blonde hair, jean shorts, and automobile-oriented pose. Lee’s photographs question the structures through which identities are determined, asking whether identity may be more fluid than such demographic categories assume.
Stamp Gallery, 2016