Jane Lee

Untitled (la moneda), 2021

oil based relief ink, paper
8.5” X 11”

saiue (in the midst) , 2021

oil based relief ink, paper
7.5” x 9”

dojangs (lonely), 2020

Paper, stamp ink, hand carved rubber eraser
9” x 12”

dojangs (lonely), 2020

Paper, stamp ink, hand carved rubber eraser
9” x 12”

dojangs (quiet fury), 2021

Toned paper, stamp ink, hand carved rubber eraser
5.5” x 8.5”

injang (jae-in), 2021

Ink, hand carved rubber eraser signature stamp, paper
16” x 24”

a fucking reckoning, 2021

Journal entry, Sumi ink, ballpoint pen, paper
11.5” x 8”

a fucking reckoning, 2021

Journal entry, Sumi ink, ballpoint pen, paper
11.5” x 8”

Artist Statement

My current artistic practice combines historical and archival research with critical self theorization as tools to further examine the idea of the personal as the political. By focusing on handmade tactile making processes, I seek to entertain the question; How can social change continue to be influenced by the combination of visuality, language and text?

In the discussion of “the personal,” I investigate my specific emotional experiences and trauma, marginalized intersections of my identity, such as race and class, and the creolization of culture and language. I explore and challenge the perception of the meek, submissive and hypersexualized Eastern-Asian woman in American society, through my own personal dialogue and visual lens. My working practice which includes journaling, drawing, painting, and printmaking, are used as tools of decolonial methodologies. As a response to the capitalist commodification of art making processes and artists, I commit to handmade and sensorial techniques such as relief carving, handwritten type and calligraphy, and gestural drawings. These
making processes furthermore serve as therapeutic, playful and pleasurable material experimentations.

Languages play an integral role in my art, through continuous usage of text and imagery. I use several spoken languages in my work, like English, Spanish and Korean (Hangul). I utilize rubber erasers as a connection to outsider art and as a reference to my lower socio-economic status. Using these tools meant for erasure and subverting them into tools for mark-making also
relates to the minor feelings experienced by the hyper-invisibility of the Asian American experience, and the specificity of my own Korean-American experience.