el n.k. lee is a visual artist working in the field of expanded painting. By re-organizing the materials of painting she draws a conflation between form and subject (’the painting structure’ with ‘the painterly image’) in order to embed identity into larger systems of image production and dissemination. As a provocation of even her own self as a mediated image surface, she suggests that the visual grammar of representation can be shifted through suspension and accumulation; the loading and unloading of symbolic meaning. Whether looking to how national identity forms the individual; ethnic signifiers shape one’s personhood; or a sexual encounter unfolds into immobility, her practice asks: Am I subject, and the painting object; is the painting subject, and I the object; does the object complete me?

Based in Chicago, IL; Born 1996, Los Angeles
MFA, University of Chicago, DoVA
BA, University of California, Berkeley, Ethnic Studies

Language is flesh because it is borne from flesh… the body is forever of it.
                                                                                                   - Pope.L