Lindy Lee

The Seamless Tomb (wearing an iron yoke that has no hole) , 2017
inkjet print and Chinese ink on paper, unique
3 pieces: 154 x 102 cm (paper, each); 162 x 110.5 cm (frame, each); 162 x 331.5 cm (overall)

View extended notes


Provenance
Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney
Acquired from the above by the present owner on 20 September 2017

Exhibited
The Seamless Tomb, Sullivan & Strumpf, Sydney, 22 September – 14 October 2017
Lindy Lee – Moon in a Dew Drop, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2 October 2020-28 February 2021; Western Plains Culture Centre, NSW, 22 May – 1 August 2021; Lismore Regional Gallery, NSW, 14 August – 24 October 2021; Artspace Mackay, QLD,  5 November 2021– 16 January 2022; Devonport Regional Gallery, TAS, 11 February – 18 April 2022; John Curtin Gallery, WA, 12 May – 24 July 2022

Literature
Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, Lindy Lee, Zara Stanhope, Shen Qilan, Lindy Lee – Moon in a Dew Drop, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2000, illus.p.40, pp.54-55 & pp.126-127
‘Devonport only Tassie stop for artist Lindy Lee’, 9 February 2022, https://www.devonport.tas.gov.au/devonport-only-tassie-stop-for-renowned-australian-chinese-artist-lindy-lee/
Lindy Lee & Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, Ocula, 25 November 2000,  https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/lindy-lee/, illus.
Helen Musa, ‘Inspiration of living between two cultures, 12 October 2022, https://citynews.com.au/2022/inspiration-of-living-between-two-cultures/
Christina Lee, ‘The Virtues of Unbelonging’ 2022, https://issuu.com/johncurtngallery/docs/jcg_lindy_lee_book_web/s/17060500
‘MCA presents national exhibition tour of Australian Chinese Artist Lindy Lee at Lismore Regional Gallery’, The Rivers Times, 10 September 2021, https://thenorthernriverstimes.com.au/entertainment/mca-presents-national-exhibition-tour-of-australian-chinese-artist-lindy-lee-at-lismore-regional-gallery/

https://www.lindylee.net/the-seamless-tomb


The cruelty of the White Australia policy is a familiar story for many Chinese-Australian and other “non-European” families. Between 1901 and 1973, numbers of Chinese and other non-European migrants to Australia were limited, with a system of one-to-one appointments in place to control the population of migrants to Australia. 

Lindy Lee’s grandfather first came to Australia to work in the 1900s, leaving Guangdong province to replace his uncle under the White Australian policy. He was separated during this time from his daughters – including Lee’s mother – rarely returning home to visit them. Lee’s mother met and married Lee’s father, who went on to take Lee’s grandfather’s place in Australia. Lee’s father first arrived in Australia in 1946, without his wife and two young sons. 

In the years after Lee’s father left for Australia, Lee’s mother took her two sons and cycled 170 kilometres from Xinhui in Guangdong to Hong Kong with gold kept in a suitcase with a false bottom. She forged a letter saying that her uncle urgently needed her in Hong Kong, which was the only way she was able to cross the British border into Hong Kong. Only from the chance compassion of a sympathetic immigration official, Lee’s father was able to bring his family to Australia in 1953 – the following year, Lindy Lee was born.

The Seamless Tomb (wearing an iron yoke that has no hole) is a major and deeply personal work by Lee that captures the essence of this family story of separation, reunion, relocation and opportunity. Its subject is a family photograph taken in 1946, just as Lee’s father is about to move to Australia. Lee’s father stands at the centre, dressed in a Western-style suit. He is flanked by Lee’s pregnant mother, and their eldest son, Lee’s eldest brother. A fourth person from Lee’s extended family is on the right edge. There is a particular poignancy to this image, with the family having no sense of when they would be reunited. 

In The Seamless Tomb (wearing an iron yoke that has no hole), Lee has reproduced the photograph three times in individual pieces. Each printing carries its own imperfections and subtle changes, over which Lee introduces Chinese ink, especially around the rough edges of the paper. Her father and mother stand at the centre in formal dress. The granular, slightly blurred quality of the printing draws your gaze, inviting you to study the faces closely, while keeping the viewer at a tantalising distance from seeing Lee’s family and their surroundings clearly. Imbued with memory and history, the work is a remarkable encapsulation of mixed feelings of loss and retrieval with the passage of time – a reflection of Lee’s family story, but also one more broadly reflective of human experience. 

The notion of the “seamless tomb” derives from a Zen Buddhist kōan (a parable, question or paradox) that Lee described as follows when this work was first exhibited at Sullivan + Strumpf in 2017 “There is a Zen koan (paradox) that requires the student to imagine being trapped in a seamless tomb. The darkness is so absolute and profound that not a single chink of light can penetrate. Here you are – entombed for eternity. Understandably you might feel paralysed, panicked, overwhelmed – even annihilated. The Zen question is: how can one find liberation in this situation? Actually we are always stuck in this tomb – it is the nature of existence.”[1]
[1] Lindy Lee, quoted on UAP’s website for The Seamless Tomb, Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney, 2017 

  • The Seamless Tomb (wearing an iron yoke that has no hole)

Image courtesy of the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf, Sydney


View artist profile

☆ Add to wishlist
Beginning her career as a conceptual artist in the 1980s, Lindy Lee is a painter and sculptor whose work explores the concept of the self, the materiality of artworks and a broad range of cultural, ancestral and philosophical influences. Her earlier work used copies of European master paintings; images often studied in art schools through reproductions presented on slides or within the pages of a textbook rather than by encountering the original. Initially she developed these images on canvas, projecting the images onto a wax and oil surface, scraping back the minimal painting to reveal the Master image. Lee then reworked fragments of such imagery by repeatedly photocopying segments, such as a female face, from the larger image. With these early images, Lee challenged the accepted value of the great master paintings and propositioned the viewer to consider notions of the copy, value, identity and recognition.

Born in Brisbane in 1954, Lee's parents emigrated from China in the context of the White Australia policy. As an Australian with Chinese ancestry, Lee's practice has moved across a wide range of cultural influences. From the 1990s, Lee began to integrate family portraits into her work. At the same time, she began exploring Buddhist philosophy and Taoism, which led to greater introspection and the exploration of chance in large-scale sculptures that involved burning holes through paper or pouring metal onto the ground to create randomly formed shapes that Lee then arranged into a wall sculpture.

In 2020-21, Lee received the major survey Lindy Lee; Moon in a Dew Drop, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, which toured nationally. A major commission, Ouroboros, was announced by the National Gallery of Australia in 2021, adding to existing commissions Lee has made for the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, City of Sydney Council, and Tower of Ten Billion Stars, Sanya Bay, Hainan Island, China. In 2019, a portrait of Lee by Tony Costa won the Archibald Prize. Lee lives and works in northern New South Wales.