Artist Series: Meet Tzung Hui Lauren Lee
Tzung Hui Lauren Lee is an artist from Johannesburg. She is a 4th year Fine Art student at Wits University. Her focus is paper making, drawing/painting and sculpture.
Lauren will be one of the artists featured in the ORIENTation: The diaspora of East Asian identities in South Africa exhibition taking place in Johannesburg later this year.
Read more about why Lauren, when and why she became an artist and what inspires her.
"Keep pushing yourself out there and market yourself. Listen to people around you. Your opinion isn’t the only one and always have an open mind and be respectful to people and yourself and don’t drop your morals for anyone even if the deal sounds too good. Stick with the art practice you are interested in. Don’t chase a fad. Just be true to who you are and grow with the people around you" ~ Tzung Hui Lauren Lee
Name: Tzung Hui Lauren Lee | 李宗慧 Occupation: 4th year Fine Art student
Where were you born? Where do you live now?
I was born in Johannesburg South Africa and I still currently reside here.
When did you become an artist? What is your speciality?
I don’t know when and what point I became an artist or when I began considering myself as an artist. I really haven’t given it much thought before because I have always just made things and created it? But I guess I’ll consider myself an artist right now. I have a few specialities, I work with a magnitude of varying mediums. I use each medium for a different conversation I’d like to create within a piece? I think that each medium has certain histories that it contains that can be used to challenge various narratives. But the medium I’m currently focused on is paper making, drawing/painting and sculpture.
What art training/studying did you have or were you self-taught?
I properly started drawing and began engaging with different forms of art making when I was in grade 9 and beginning to build off of high school art classes and I currently study a Fine Art degree at the University of Witwatersrand.
Why did you become an artist?
Previously I was very into fashion design and the industry of advertising, and that is why I got interested in art as they are very interconnected topics. But as I grew older I think the idea of making work or making something that can bring an enigmatic feeling to people became more of an interest to me? Speaking on various topics and engaging with different ideologies became more of the passion I became interested in.
What inspires you as an artist? Are there any artists that you admire?
Since I am a very visual person, anything I see around me in my context and society offers me a lot of inspiration but I have become incredibly interested in the idea of origin and pushing away from the idea of western ideology. From this I have become interested in my family origin and culture, ideas of diaspora and the meaning and energy transformed within materiality. I admire many artists, whether they be my university professors/artists/peers that we are exposed to or outside of university that has transformed my thinking around art and artistic practice and how they have assisted me in getting to the current position I am within myself. Some of the artists I admire are Cao Fei, Do Ho Suh, Hiroshima Sugimoto, Xu Bing, Tiffany Chung just to name a few. The way they think about materiality and space is really incredible and I admire them very much.
Please tell us about your art, for the upcoming exhibition? What do you hope to achieve through your artwork?
My artwork is a paper piece that will be using blind embossing that includes various papers. By developing this project and collecting various different forms of paper it
made me realise that by categorising the different papers i collected. It slowly started building a representation of myself, through the things I purchased shown on receipts, the toiletries I have used that collect my DNA and parts of my cells, the maps that I have collected that have guided me, course packs that I have used throughout university and high school, drawings I have made, Chinese paper money and how money has a spiritual aspect but also a very realistic one in which money revolves around us - even though it is just a representation for rare metals and a whole economy that is created from it. Birthday cards and certificates and the identities other people have created of me. Identity documents, birth certificates that hold our identities and without them we are technically none existent. To conclude this point, we transfer so much meaning on to this medium and because of this it holds so much importance and value in our lives.
Reworking various types of paper that cannot be recycled or used again allows me to further push the idea of meaning transferred and putting myself within that process that was once mechanical, transforms these ideas and brings it back to the medium but also pushes my own meaning within it.
Through this project I am trying to explore the different forms of the medium and the relationship I hold within it that controls so much of ourselves. Even though this world is becoming digitised, our past selves are held so much and controlled by paper.
Even if the world moves to a digitised space we cannot fully move away from it because of the importance held within it.
I am very interested in the idea of using Chinese cultural techniques but within my context and using them not only in the actual techniques of making but also they way we think about art making and myself. I’m also interested in that the medium holds the message and how important that is for Chinese South Africans experiencing diasporas or questions around themselves.
Why do you think that this exhibition is so important?
I think this exhibition is very important because us as a race within South Africa is so overlooked and often othered by other races. We are constantly fetishised and romanticised as a race within South Africa and I think it is important to educate people about who we are and its not just about us being a stereotype they think we are. We are a diverse group of people with diverse histories and each of us are so different, hence the identity issue. Chinese South Africans and first and second generation South Africans are so extremely broad. But also people have constantly battered us on internet etc with all the cases going on online recently and currently. This is an opportunity for us all who are from diverse backgrounds as artists to give our voice and hopefully educate the greater South African community about who we are.
What advice would you give to young aspiring artists in South Africa?
I am currently still a young aspiring artist but what I have learnt so far is that, we should never take anyone who we meet for granted. Always speak to people you meet because you never know what they can offer you and what you can build with them. Keep pushing yourself out there and market yourself. Listen to people around you. Your opinion isn’t the only one and always have an open mind and be respectful to people and yourself and don’t drop your morals for anyone even if the deal sounds too good. Stick with the art practice you are interested in. Don’t chase a fad. Just be true to who you are and grow with the people around you.
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