Sharon Lee
The Crescent Void II, 2018-2019
Photograph, Archival print on Hahnemuehle German Etching Paper 310gsm
40 x 43 x 6.5 cm
Edition of 5
Sharon Lee’s (b. 1992 Hong Kong) art practice has been (re-)approaching micro-perspectives of ‘small memories’ in countering the grand historical narrative and resisting the overloaded image representations in the post-photography...
Sharon Lee’s (b. 1992 Hong Kong) art practice has been (re-)approaching micro-perspectives of ‘small memories’ in countering the grand historical narrative and resisting the overloaded image representations in the post-photography era. The practice is inseparable from her art research challenging the cultural concept of “disappearance” through a conceptual and technical strategy of “re-” grounded in the post-photography discourse. In reiteration and reconfiguration, Lee experiments with the photographic process in the form of analogue-digital hybrids as well as transmutations involving various sculptural materials.
About the work:
It begins with a worn-out photo.
Hiding in an album that my grandmother left us after she passed away is a photo that tells an untold chapter of my family history: My grandparents used to run a small grocery store in Chai Wan in the 70s. Today, Man Lee Store, as it was called, has already morphed into a run-of-the-mill concrete wall structure facing an underground train station.
Our city never ceases to change. As I turn the found objects from grocery stores into specimens in concrete, the disappearing urban tales are buried underneath the ever-tall high-rises and are given new forms. The absence in space of the concrete boards makes a poignant remark as an uncanny presence against change. These half-moulds half-specimens are then recast as negative images. The photographic impressions, with their light and shadow reversed, reflect the achingly quotidian life lost in the fabric of space and time. Their silence never ceases to speak to us, as a void lurking in our city that seems so close yet distant to us.
Sharon Lee received her BA Fine Arts and MFA from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She won the award WMA Masters 2018/19 and received several art scholarships from the university and government fund. She debuted her solo exhibitions The Presence of Absence with Lumenvisum New Light Award in 2016. She has collaborated with several local and international art institutions and festivals on various exhibitions— Art Promotion Office, Hong Kong International Photo Festival, Peer to Peer:UK/HK, The Listening Biennial, Tai Kwun Contemporary.
About the work:
It begins with a worn-out photo.
Hiding in an album that my grandmother left us after she passed away is a photo that tells an untold chapter of my family history: My grandparents used to run a small grocery store in Chai Wan in the 70s. Today, Man Lee Store, as it was called, has already morphed into a run-of-the-mill concrete wall structure facing an underground train station.
Our city never ceases to change. As I turn the found objects from grocery stores into specimens in concrete, the disappearing urban tales are buried underneath the ever-tall high-rises and are given new forms. The absence in space of the concrete boards makes a poignant remark as an uncanny presence against change. These half-moulds half-specimens are then recast as negative images. The photographic impressions, with their light and shadow reversed, reflect the achingly quotidian life lost in the fabric of space and time. Their silence never ceases to speak to us, as a void lurking in our city that seems so close yet distant to us.
Sharon Lee received her BA Fine Arts and MFA from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She won the award WMA Masters 2018/19 and received several art scholarships from the university and government fund. She debuted her solo exhibitions The Presence of Absence with Lumenvisum New Light Award in 2016. She has collaborated with several local and international art institutions and festivals on various exhibitions— Art Promotion Office, Hong Kong International Photo Festival, Peer to Peer:UK/HK, The Listening Biennial, Tai Kwun Contemporary.
Exhibitions
31 Women Artists HK 2022Copyright The Artist