Hundreds of cultural treasures are returned to Peru from the US, Germany and Canada.
In her 2½-minute video “Amulet,” award-winning artist Helen Lee shows her own image morphing into that of her young daughter Cicada. Both are dressed in black and framed by a black background, reciting Zhuyin Fuhao, a Chinese phonetic alphabet used today, Lee says, only in Taiwan and by the Chinese diaspora.
Lee, an associate professor of art and head of the Glass Lab at UW-Madison, wears a delicate necklace in the video with a small charm made from jade. It’s from her grandmother, and something she wears every day.
“I guess it’s easy for me to edit that out, since it’s been on me since I’ve been 20,” said Lee, who seemed surprised when a visitor to the gallery asked about the necklace. Her grandmother, she went on to say, had raised her in America but during Lee’s childhood only spoke to her in Chinese.
Like that necklace, Lee’s own complex Chinese-American identity is intertwined with her work in “Exuviae,” an exhibition running through March 7 at the Arts + Literature Laboratory. The title “Exuviae,” as a printed visitor’s guide explains, “refers to a sloughed-off skin, such as that of snakes, cicadas and other exoskeleton creatures.”
The show is part of a yearlong celebration called Glass Madison, which marks the 60th anniversary of the collegiate glass program at UW-Madison, the first in the nation.
In January, Lee also was named one of 50 recipients of the prestigious United States Artists Fellowships. The $50,000 unrestricted award goes to artists and collectives recognized for their “contributions to the cultural landscape of the country” in the fields of architecture and design, craft, dance, film, media, music, theater and performance, traditional arts, visual art and writing.
“This is one of the very few (awards) that acknowledges contemporary glass practitioners,” said Lee. “I am representing glass under the discipline of craft, amongst many, many other disciplines, and I really appreciate being in the company of architects, filmmakers and many other different categories, and being part of that broader dialogue.”