Interview #159 — Lindy Lee

by Soo-Min Shim

Lindy Lee is a painter whose practice centres on portraiture and the self. Her practice is informed by the eastern philosophies of Taoism and Buddhism and their teachings on the relationship between humanity and the universe.

Lindy spoke to Soo-Min about the moon, resolving disquiet, and transcending intellectual constructs.

Could you tell me a bit more about the title of the exhibition Moon in a Dew Drop? For me the title speaks to the idea of the sublime, of course thinking about Blake’s ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.’ Of course, this is from the Western canon but I do wonder if there are parallels to be made around the universality of encountering the vastness of the universe and our place within it?

The Moon stands in for cosmos and infinity, the moon is the immense vastness of the universe. It is also changeable and mutable during its monthly circuit around the Earth. The dewdrop has a very finite existence—it evaporates with the morning sun. The moon reflected in a dewdrop is symbolic of infinity existing within the finite... as Blake says: ‘To see the World in a Grain of Sand.’

Blake is part of the Western canon but he was also a mystic. I think there is genuine mysticism and maybe only poetry and art can express this. I read somewhere that philosophy only leads to more questions, poetry on the other hand leads us to mystery... the ineffable and unfathomable. The mystery is that each life, human or otherwise, always exceeds any description that can be put upon it. We are much much more than any description can be spoken. We are the same as the dewdrop—takes the power of the entire universe to create a dewdrop.

This exhibition is a thirty year survey and I wonder how you have seen your practice change and evolve over such a long period of time? How do you sustain interest, passion and love for your practice/discipline/industry over several decades?

I’ve been driven by questions of an existential nature since I could think, and the resolution of these questions is the meaning of my life. I was overwhelmed at an early age by a sense of nihilism and despair, which grew from my experience of insignificance in relation to the tides of history and time, and a sense of not belonging, because I wasn’t anchored to anything.

Being an artist was the only way for me to crystallise and resolve the disquiet. My visual language arises directly from material engagement with the world. By persisting with this, I’ve come to a place of peace, and now, because I have a lifetime of engaging with these questions of meaning – I can play!

I am curious how your understanding of the label of ‘Asian-Australian’ has also evolved over the past 30 years. You really paved the way for future artists and art historians like me, especially with your involvement with 4A—how have you seen Australian visual arts change from the White Australia Policy, rise of Hansonism, ideologies of assimilation and multiculturalism?

I was brought up with the White Australia policy. My early works were trying to align themselves with a European tradition. I felt I was being co-opted into the dominant culture; the attitude was that I was a token European, despite my race, which of course was annihilating. In a curious way, my work has developed in tandem with Australia recognising its multiculturalism.

The wonderful thing is that younger generations of Asian-Australians have much more ease and comfort, and a greater pride in the ‘quirks’ of ancestry than I did. I had so much shame around my Chinese-ness. What surprises me is that so many younger Asian-Australian artists have told me that my work resonates with them, that I have voiced their story. This is particularly so with young women artists.

The idea that I could be a role model for these young artists is profoundly moving to me. It’s not an easy role for me to accept, but I have to stand within it.

Elsewhere you stated that ‘the migrant’s story is really one of hope, trying to find something better’ which reconfigures the trauma that migrant narratives often pivot around. Have you ever felt the pressures of a certain performance of diasporic grief for institutional validation? You seem to shift that focus onto empowerment, even potential action, and I wonder if you could speak more on the construction of a framework of hope, of what you also described as ‘restoring that which has been lost.’

When I talk of hope, I’m not talking of everyday hope, for good weather or a nice birthday gift, but the hope that is born from despair, and the courage that is necessary to fulfil that hope. We can never underestimate what it takes for refugees and economic migrants to journey to a foreign country in the hope that life will be better. What an act of faith!

In that situation, you don’t have any luxury of self reflection: it’s about survival. Freedom is not about a dream to have everything just as we’d like, but some sense of agency, autonomy and connection in the world.

Similarly, you have quoted Dōgen’s ‘to study the self is to forget the self’ in discussing cultural identity. However, I am also reminded of Audre Lorde’s philosophy that ‘If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.’ How do you reconcile these attachments to self, especially when your artworks are framed within the political context of Asian-Australia?

The framing—the political context, for instance—is always an intellectual one, which is fine (and essential) but those frameworks are always ‘the finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself.’

A Bodhisattva makes a vow to save the many beings. However, to save the many beings, you have to save yourself first. Save yourself from your own projections—am I better than, worse than, etc—from the distortions of reality that encourage you to do this. The world groans under the weight of projection and opinion. Saving the many beings is not a neurotic desire to fix the world, but to save yourself from your own self delusions, and in that moment, if only for a moment, the world is saved.

I want my work to give rise to associations and questions. Thus, intimate experience of the work is primary, then the stories and resonances that individually or collectively arise, give the work additional life. As in the Buddhist saying: no way to peace but peace in every step of the way...

Your works are influenced by the movements of nature, often in subversive ways, using fire and metal to represent water. How does the landscape around you change your work? In particular, your studio is located in Byron hinterland—does this environment inform your practice?

I lived in Sydney for 35 years, and never thought I’d leave, but after six years in the Byron hinterland I find that, these days, cityscapes can make me feel a little insane, unanchored even.

It wasn’t until I moved up here that I began to experience the kind of immersion in nature that has become necessary for my work. Being steeped in this landscape is utterly essential, and that relationship is only getting deeper.

Although I’ve been working with ideas concerning nature for years, living day in and day out with the sounds of birds, truly being able to experience the moon and stars at night without street lights to dilute the sky... it all feeds into my work in subtle and profound ways.

Horizon... the line where sky meets earth... earth and heaven. Seeing it, allowing it to seep into my soul on a daily basis, I’m always seeking a special patch of blue, just above the horizon. The colour is the infinity of blue sky tinged with water. It’s not so much the reflection of the ocean: that colour can be found above the inland ridges of the hinterland too. Whenever I see it, I place my heart there.

From this idea of photocopy in your earlier works to your latest flung bronze works that are ‘unique’ and impossible to replicate, how do you define ‘authenticity’? Does such a concept exist?

Authenticity is something we all yearn for—being true and real. And it’s the yearning for this, which underlies questions of identity and belonging. Dōgen, the 13th century Japanese Zen Master, wrote that ‘to study the self is to forget the self and be authenticated by the ten thousand things’, meaning that to understand who and what you are, one must let go of all the constructs and ideas about ‘self’ that we habitually default to. Being authentic is to engage without the ego projections that distort reality. By directly and openly engaging with precisely what enters your life in any given moment, we are authentic. That connection transcends intellectual constructs. We’re not thinking about it, we are it. In that moment the connection is what we are.

For me, as an Asian-Australian, going back to Korea (when I can) feels very important. However, now, because of COVID my thoughts and feelings about place, feeling placed/dis-placed are stronger than ever. Has COVID effected your own practice?

Living where I do, in the Northern Rivers, we’ve had almost no direct impact in terms of illness. But because my mother and siblings and their families are in Queensland, and the border has been closed, there’s a weird sense of distance created. They’re only two hours drive away but for large slabs of time I’ve not been allowed to travel to see them. I’ve been fascinated by the ways in which people, groups, and societies have handled the pandemic: the full spectrum from authoritarian to free-for-all. The cracks in society have become more obvious, more pronounced.

Dharma gates are countless.

Who are you inspired by?

My mother. She’s had a very rich and difficult life but she somehow has always managed to triumph. She has a brilliantly wilful optimism.

What are you currently listening to?

When I’m working I usually have some music that I play almost obsessively. It sets the mood, allows me to pick up the threads previously established. Australian pianist and composer Luke Howard has been accompanying me in my studio for most of this year.

How do you practice self-care?

I meditate, swim every single day—then I pretty much eat anything I feel like.

Do you have any advice for emerging visual artists?

Everybody has a True North—follow it even though the journey might be uneven and sometimes fraught. The fact is you are your own North, stepping up to being yourself is the journey.

What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?

To me, being Asian-Australian means that I have to entertain multiple view-points all the time. This is incredibly rich fodder for an artist.