Dionne Lee
Site Unfolding
Opening February 1, 2024, 6-8pm
February 1 - March 16, 2024
Site Unfolding (2023), a multi-channel video installation by Dionne Lee, uses images and constructions from the natural world to identify narratives that are ingrained without attribution for the underpinning of history and its timeline, the absence of an origin story being central to the visual calculus of the image. The specific sites referenced in Site Unfolding are left unnamed as a nod to the broadness of the landscape that makes up the United States and its intermingled and complex associations to the larger topics of ownership, of belonging and of visitorship, of direct human impact and impression upon the land, and of the co-opted heritage inspired by location.
For Site Unfolding Lee has included audio taken from the ground, both from natural processes such as the movement of water and wind, but also from human intervention such as the sound of a piece of metal being dragged across the packed, dry earth. An excerpt from Observations on the Ground, a poem written by Mary Ruefle, is repeated by Lee in various ways throughout the video.
Accompanying the exhibition and written for the occasion of Site Unfolding is the text, I Wonder if Waves Feel a Sense of Kinship According to How They Were Formed: A Cento, by Saretta Morgan.
With special thanks to the Museum of the Moving Image, New York.
Dionne Lee (b. 1988, New York, NY) lives and works in Columbus, OH and received an MFA at California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2017. Lee’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, US, New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, US, The Princeton University Art Museum, US, Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver, CA, Aperture Foundation, New York, US, International Center of Photography, New York, US, Light Work, New York, and Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts. Recent exhibitions include Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK, Penumbra Foundation, New York City, Tara Downs, New York City, The Locker Plant / Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX, Et al. San Francisco, CA, / (Slash), San Francisco, CA, FotoFest Biennial 2022: If I Had a Hammer, Houston, TX, P. Bibeau, New York City, and Center For Fine Art Photography at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, Fort Collins, CO. In 2016 Lee was awarded the Barclay Simpson Award and a Graduate Fellowship at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. In 2019 Lee was an artist in residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Lee was an Artist-in-Residence at the Chinati Foundation, Unseen California, and Land Arts of the American West between 2022-2023.
Site Unfolding
Opening February 1, 2024, 6-8pm
February 1 - March 16, 2024
Site Unfolding (2023), a multi-channel video installation by Dionne Lee, uses images and constructions from the natural world to identify narratives that are ingrained without attribution for the underpinning of history and its timeline, the absence of an origin story being central to the visual calculus of the image. The specific sites referenced in Site Unfolding are left unnamed as a nod to the broadness of the landscape that makes up the United States and its intermingled and complex associations to the larger topics of ownership, of belonging and of visitorship, of direct human impact and impression upon the land, and of the co-opted heritage inspired by location.
For Site Unfolding Lee has included audio taken from the ground, both from natural processes such as the movement of water and wind, but also from human intervention such as the sound of a piece of metal being dragged across the packed, dry earth. An excerpt from Observations on the Ground, a poem written by Mary Ruefle, is repeated by Lee in various ways throughout the video.
Accompanying the exhibition and written for the occasion of Site Unfolding is the text, I Wonder if Waves Feel a Sense of Kinship According to How They Were Formed: A Cento, by Saretta Morgan.
With special thanks to the Museum of the Moving Image, New York.
Dionne Lee (b. 1988, New York, NY) lives and works in Columbus, OH and received an MFA at California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2017. Lee’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, US, New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, US, The Princeton University Art Museum, US, Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver, CA, Aperture Foundation, New York, US, International Center of Photography, New York, US, Light Work, New York, and Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts. Recent exhibitions include Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK, Penumbra Foundation, New York City, Tara Downs, New York City, The Locker Plant / Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX, Et al. San Francisco, CA, / (Slash), San Francisco, CA, FotoFest Biennial 2022: If I Had a Hammer, Houston, TX, P. Bibeau, New York City, and Center For Fine Art Photography at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, Fort Collins, CO. In 2016 Lee was awarded the Barclay Simpson Award and a Graduate Fellowship at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. In 2019 Lee was an artist in residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Lee was an Artist-in-Residence at the Chinati Foundation, Unseen California, and Land Arts of the American West between 2022-2023.
Documentation by Michael Popp
Stills courtesy of Dionne Lee
