Art and Identity: Nikki S. Lee, Annotated Bibliography

Skateboarders Project #7 (2000)

Yuppie Project #4 (1998)

Hispanic Project #18 (1998)

Nikki S. Lee is a Korean born New York City-based artist born in 1970. Her projects involve infiltrating various subcultures through mimicking the dress, gestures and mannerisms of the selected group. Her photographs work as the record of a hybrid process Lee has gone through. A process that is more performative then photography based.

Her process starts with the identification of a particular group in society, in which she becomes apart of over weeks or months. She tells the people within the group that she is an artist and what her intentions are, which in time has to great significance in her integration. At spontaneous times she asks whoever is around to take a photo, a happy snap. On each of the photos is the date stamp left by the cheap camera. This stamp emphasizes the amateur quality of the photographs, their lack of conventional composition. It feels like a mark of the ‘real’, the evidence of a precise moment when a group of people were together.

The photos seem genuine, even with the preparation Lee takes for each ‘role’, the photos don’t feel staged. She has used this process for a number of different projects, transforming herself into a skateboarding kid, an exotic dancer or a businesswoman. The success of the project relies on the acceptance by the group of Lee and capturing it on film.
Each viewer will find his or her equivalent – maybe not directly, but maybe through a scene or a mannerism to relate to.

We see Lee in the photos as if she has always been apart if that community or social group. Unlike an artist such as Cindy Sherman who also uses themes that relate to what identity is through replicating a cliché or stereotype within a studio. Lee practices only outside the studio, her work seems defined by the communities she is surrounded by. Lee states, “ I don’t think about nationality or race” and adds “I don’t need to up that issue because other people will”.

What ‘ive taken from her documented performance is that her work doesn’t distinguish between art and life. It doesn’t feel very ‘arty’ in the sense. Lee defines herself and what identity means though the relationships with other people. Her work isn’t about, ok now im going to be a goth, or a surfie. Lee addresses the question of identity though a holistic approach. Believing that the self exists only in relationship with community. It is my understanding that Lee isn’t even playing a role at all rather she tests her own identity. In turn understanding that if it is possible to be apart of any isolated group then a person’s identity is defined by its surroundings. That the individual cannot exist without the whole.



http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/lee_nikki_s.php
http://oneartworld.com/artists/N/Nikki+S.+Lee.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_S._Lee

Art and Today. Heartney, Elanor, 2008, Phaidon.
Nikki s. Lee Projects. 2001, Cantz Hatje.
Nikki s. Lee Projects. 2001, Interview with Gilbert Vicario.