M/W 12:30pm-4:40pm
Room Barney 401
Professor: Hiroshi Sunairi
About Nikki S. Lee (Korean/American, b. 1970)
After observing particular subcultures and ethnic groups, Nikki S. Lee adopts their general style and attitude through dress, gesture, and posture, and then approaches the group in her new guise. She introduces herself as an artist (though not everyone believes her or takes it seriously), and then spends several weeks participating in the group’s routine activities and social events while a friend or member of the group photographs her with an ordinary automatic “snapshot” camera. Lee maintains control of the final image, however, insofar as she chooses when to ask for a picture and edits what photographs will eventually be displayed.
From schoolgirl to senior citizen, punk to yuppie, rural white American to urban Hispanic, Lee’s personas traverse age, lifestyle, and culture. Part sociologist and part performance artist, Lee infiltrates these groups so convincingly that in individual photographs it is difficult to distinguish her from the crowd. However, when photographs from the projects are grouped together, it is Lee’s own Korean ethnicity, drawn like a thread through each scenario, which reveals her subtle ruse.
Lee’s projects propose questions regarding identity and social behavior. Do we choose our social groups consciously? How are we identified by other people? Is it possible for us to move between cultures? Lee believes that “essentially life itself is a performance. When we change our clothes to alter our appearance, the real act is the transformation of our way of expression—the outward expression of our psyche.
— Kendra Greene
Niki S. Lee
http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/lee_nikki_s.php
http://www.tonkonow.com/lee.html
Assignment 1:
“The Art of Being contexualized:
This assignment is to create a self-portrait in a fictional place. This assignment will be executed in a final process by learning Photoshop during the class time. But, to do so, please prepare following 2 steps.
1. Found Images (*1): Please choose three location photos related to each other (you can choose images of places from magazine (any magazine for example, National Geographic), old photographs, travel books, history books.
2. Take digital photos of yourself dressed as being contexualized:
Dress Code & Culture
Please dress yourself adjusting to particular subcultures, ethnic groups, or situation. Please adopt their general style and attitude through dress, gesture, and posture.
Light
Please shoot your image adjusting to the lighting situation of the location photos you have chosen, in terms of the directions of light: up, down, or sideways.
3. Please use three images as a clue of narrative structure to evolve yourself and your role in the photograph from bystander, insider.
*1. Found object (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
A found object, in an artistic sense, indicates the use of an object which has not been designed for an artistic purpose, but which exists for another purpose already. Found objects may exist either as utilitarian, manufactured items, or things (including, at times, dead bodies), which occur in nature. In both cases the objects are discovered by the artist or musician to be capable of being employed in an artistic way, and are designated as "found" to distinguish them from purposely created items used in the art forms.
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