Maia Ruth Lee | Human Life in Motion
Maia Ruth Lee, Bondage Baggage 3, 2018. Tarp, rope, tape, luggage, burlap, 37 x 32 x 24 inches. Courtesy of Jack Hanley Gallery and the artist.
PREVIEW: Thursday 20 March 2025, 6–9PM
EXHIBITION: 21 March 2025–31 May 2025
OPENING TIMES: Thursday–Saturday, 10AM–6PM, or by appointment.
WHERE: Gallery 1 and Gallery 2
What does it mean to memorialise something transient?
For Colorado-based artist Maia Ruth Lee’s first UK solo exhibition beginning on the Spring Equinox, we imagine the gallery as a worldly and spiritual centre. The presentation will explore human life in motion and feature objects as offerings from different exhibitors.
In Gallery 1, the five new sculptures that Lee will make at Primary will become part of her Bondage Baggage (2018 – present) series. The sculptures are intricate prototypes of luggage seen arriving at the Kathmandu International Airport, often owned by Nepali migrant labour workers from the Middle East, South and East Asia. They are often wrapped and bound in quotidian materials: cardboard, rope, textiles and tape. The luggage is bound in ways that are impossible to tamper with, concealed and enforced by techniques that are characteristically unique. The masking of its contents would pose a threat to any Western standards of security measures and customs—the hand-woven luggage becomes remarkable objects that are, by design, an embodiment of anti-establishment and anti-imperial gestures. Blending the installation with traditions of public offerings, as seen in Korean jesa or at religious sites such as Buddhist monasteries within Nepal, Primary and Lee will invite local communities to present their luggage and offerings alongside her sculptures.
A correlating new large-scale work will have a different presence upstairs in Gallery 2—a sixth green banner will become part of the artist’s Bondage Baggage Banner (2024) that will be workshopped together with a group of local migrants in collaboration with Nottingham-based charity Refugee Roots. The piece will become a new addition to the existing five banners individually painted in black, white, yellow, blue, and red, corresponding to the five hues that constitute obangsaek, the five cardinal directions and elements in Korean traditional culture. The new addition of the green banner symbolises free passage, making it the colour of safety. Green is also associated with harmony, growth, hope, trust, wisdom and faith. The banners are imprints and markings of the bound luggage as seen in Gallery 1—the painted surfaces of the sculptures are stretched and smooth like skin—transformed into abstract traces and contours of the migrant experience.
Once we leave a place is it there, 2024
The original banners are part of Lee’s installation, Once we leave a place is it there (2024), curated by Clarice Lee, Malaika Newsome, Fiona Yo and Ruiqi Wang, at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York—an installation that was created as an intervention to colonial and imperial structures, and a space created for gradual metamorphosis and offering—in recognition and honouring of migrants known and unknown. Drawn from poet Myung Mi Kim’s Under Flag (1991), the installation echoes the poet’s reflection on her journey as an immigrant, mirroring some of the narratives that Lee responds to. At Primary, this installation takes on a new energy and form, translating and responding to urgent immigration issues at home in Nottingham.
So here, we ask you, Maia, and ourselves again: ‘What does it mean to memorialise something transient?’
Human Life in Motion is supported by the Bagri Foundation.
Maia Ruth Lee, B.B.Earth, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 109.25 x 184.25 inches / 277.5 x 468 cm. Courtsey of François Ghebaly and the artist.
Artist Biography:
Maia Ruth Lee (b. 1983 Busan, South Korea) lives and works in Salida, Colorado. Recent solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2024, 2022); Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2024); Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2023); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2021). Lee participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Center for Visual Arts, Denver (2023); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2022); Whitney Biennial, New York (2019); and Studio Museum 127, New York (2019). Her work will be featured in the 2024 iteration of Prospect New Orleans, Prospect.6: the future is present, the harbinger is home.
Working across painting, sculpture, photography and film, Maia Ruth Lee has crafted an elegant visual lexicon that takes on the complexities of the self in times of dissonance and globalization. Lee was born in Busan, South Korea, grew up in Kathmandu and Seoul, spent over a decade in New York City, and has lived in Salida, Colorado, in recent years. Migration lies at the core of her experience. In her practice, Lee brings this cross-border perspective to bear in works that often evoke way-finding in the form of maps, atlases, and banners. An underlying interest in language, translation, symbols, and signs runs throughout her work. The body, too, is an enduring concern for Lee, whose bound baggage and textile works metaphorically visualize the accumulations and contours of a life. Navigating universal phenomena like loss and change, Lee’s tender, expansive practice embodies journeying itself, giving form to migrations of people, tongues, and ideas.
Access:
Human Life in Motion will be partly located on our ground-floor gallery space, which has full, level access from our main entrance on Seely Road. However, there is no step-free access to our first-floor gallery space. An audio-described video walkthrough of the installation in Gallery 2 will be available to watch on a monitor in the Reading Room.
If you would like to make a group booking or visit our exhibitions at a quiet time, please get in touch with us at admin@weareprimary.org or 0115 924 4493 to arrange.
Large print, braille, and easy-read versions of the exhibition text will be available at our Reception; please ask our Front of House Assistant for details. Check back on this page for an audio version of the exhibition text, downloadable translations of the text in different languages, an audio-described video walkthrough of the exhibition, and a glossary of terms in English.
You can find further access information here.
Please email admin@weareprimary.org or call 0115 924 4493 with any access inquiries.