Nikki S. Lee
Since
1997 Nikki S. Lee has been making photos of herself as she lives within
the cultures of those around her. The Korean born Lee’s work is
therefore as performative as it is photographic. Through the conventions
of the snapshot –its immediacy, its casual composition, its artless
lighting- Lee works to demonstrate the reality of her integration into
the various selves and cultures she inhabits. While she has moved between
a broad range of cultures and peoples in her work, she has throughout
toyed with the notion of what it is to be Korean, American, Hispanic,
etc. As in other projects, in the Hip Hop Project she dons not merely
the wardrobe of the Hip Hop community but also its sense of itself, its
gestures and its attitude.
This ability to dress
up and transform oneself can be seen in photographers such as Cindy Sherman
and the Yasumasa Morimura. The difference in Lee’s work is that
she is not merely dressing up, not only playing the part. She is living
it. In her various guises she becomes the thing she acts. While this calls
out the specifities of each of the cultures depicted it also accentuates
the fluidity of Nikki S. Lee’s own sense of who she is and how she
identifies herself. The ability to be Korean, a skateboarder, and exotic
dancer, Hispanic, a Hip Hopper, highlights the possibility of each of
us to be who we are and who we wish to be, not bound by birth, geography
or physical attributes.