Bovey Lee - Application for Naturalization
BOVEY LEE
Bovey Lee is an artist based in Los Angeles, California, USA. Her recent works in hand cut paper and site-specific installations focus on migration and its impact on our shared humanity and the environment. It is an extension to her on-going research that explores our competing/conflicting desires between nature preservation and urbanization.
Born in Hong Kong and practicing Chinese calligraphy since the age of ten, she studied painting and drawing in her formative years and completed her BA degree in Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
In 1993, she came to the United States as a painter and earned her first Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley. Subsequently, she earned a second MFA in Digital Arts at Pratt Institute in New York. Since 2005, she has been creating cut paper and site-specific installations.
THE PERSPECTIVE OF A CHINESE WOMAN IN THE U.S.
Bovey Lee’s piece, Application for Naturalization, is part of a larger body of work she has done utilizing her own immigration documentation. The artist expresses her experience as an immigrant, a woman, and a person of color in her work, sharing her experience, as well as using her work to act as a broader voice for those same minority groups. Throughout her work, Bovey Lee explores themes of departure and arrival and constant motion from one thing to the next in the context of the diasporic self and communities. Lee’s work is inspired by her personal history. Inspired by traditional Chinese paper cutting, her Chinese heritage, and her earliest encounters with Chinese calligraphy, painting, and drawing as a child, Lee’s work has a personal touch to her as she tackles politically charged topics.
Bovey Lee’s work with themes of departure and arrival became growingly more significant and urgent to her due to the 2016 election as immigration became threatened, and a human rights crisis escalated at the border. Lee’s work shifted focus towards the US/Mexico border and the state of immigrants in America. Her works began to depict symbols of stars, gates, tiaras, fences, and oceans, all while still drawing on her personal experience as an immigrant but now tied to a much broader communal issue.
In her piece, Application for Naturalization, these same themes are represented through the ocean, which are depicted through cut-outs that Lee did by hand. Her work was done on photo transfers of her actual Immigration papers; papers Lee has refused to get rid of for years despite repeated reassurance that saving them was unnecessary. This act of holding on to her papers reflects the insecurity and anxiety that many immigrants feel, especially in the current political climate. These papers serve as memories and act as symbols of the artist’s identity as an immigrant, acting as documentation for her sense of self and personal identity as a Chinese woman in the U.S.. Lee brings in her own personal experience to her work as an immigrant from Hong Kong but also speaks to immigration as a whole. The ocean in her piece is one of the symbols she began incorporating into her work after the 2016 election. The motion of the waves Lee hand-cut into her immigration papers captures the turbulence of immigration to a new country, as well as anxieties and uncertainty surrounding obtaining citizenship in a country that is becoming increasingly hostile towards immigrants.
Bovey Lee’s work, Application for Naturalization, struck me as an incredibly compelling piece. I found her work to be very engaging The delicacy of the cutouts layered with the politically charged undertone of the artist’s own Immigration documentation called me to think about not only her own personal journey as an immigrant but the shared experience of all immigrants who go through the struggle of attempting to obtain citizenship as well.
In many of Lee’s works since the 2016 presidential election, she incorporates a lot of different symbols that reference immigration in light of the rising political heat surrounding the border. Her works began to depict symbols such as stars, gates, tiaras, and fences. One of these symbols is the ocean, which is depicted in her piece Application for Naturalization. The motion of the waves Lee hand-cut into her immigration papers captures the turbulence of immigration to a new country, as well as anxieties and uncertainty surrounding obtaining citizenship in a country that is becoming increasingly hostile towards immigrants and from looking at the piece, I could sense the feelings tied to facing the unknown and the challenges that come with immigration. I could also feel the hope and dedication for the future in Lee’s work that initially drew me to her piece.