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HOUSE HOLD
TIDAWHITNEY LEK
FEBRUARY 13 – MARCH 20, 2022
- Sow & Tailor is pleased to present House Hold, our first solo exhibition with new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Tidawhitney Lek.
- Lek’s exhibition looks to the family home as a stepping off point and its porous boundary between the public and private space.The multidimensional compositions of oil, pastel, and acrylic incorporate the dichotomy of interior and exterior worlds. Populating her spaces are figures of her family, domestic objects, and disembodied hands. The family members depicted are portrayed in traditional Khmer garb, a nod to generational traditions that are carried through immigrant families. For Lek, the generational traditions include trauma that stems from a family that escaped the Khmer Rouge. The hands represent invisible forces that push and compel— fear, anxiety, frustration, and misguided attempts to control the world around them.
- Intrinsic within the artist’s usage of fear and anxiety is an undertone of violence. Ghost-like hands emerge from the dark of bushes and heavy iron skillets, while shimmering knives are carried in the hands of women, and guns brandished in a black and white memory of the Khmer Rouge as it peeks through a crumbling wall. Throughout the work are portals of escape, such as a computer screen or a childhood game of hide and seek, where a young woman emerges from the dark of the closet interior.
- Much of Lek’s work uses layers to build meaning and complicate familial narratives. Throughout the works she paints from family photographs, often using both their image and physical form in frames. These allusions to family history and generational memory complicate the paintings— bridging time, physicalizing memory, and providing a concrete reality within her collage-like compositions. Specific reference or objects, are grounding points to the work; talismans of the real world that allows for transference of perspective. Lek pulls the viewer closer to her personal experience with exactitude and symbolism entwined. Each painting offers a glimpse into the interior world and the multitudes it contains; full of its joys and anxieties.
- Tidawhitey Lek (b. 1992. Long Beach, CA) Lives and works in Long Beach, CA. Lek was recently included in group exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Sow & Tailor, Durden and Ray. She also participated in two-person exhibitions at Long Beach Museum of Art, Cerritos College, and Luna Anais Gallery. Her work is included in the permanent collection of ICA Miami. She has an upcoming solo exhibition with Taymour Grahne Projects, London.
