Summer Mei Ling Lee: The Danger of Having a Soul

November 2 - December 7, 2024

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 2 from 5-7pm

Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat 11am - 5pm
Minnesota Street Project, Room 204
1275 Minnesota St., San Francisco

re.riddle is pleased to present The Danger of Having a Soul, a solo exhibition of work by Summer Mei Ling Lee. The opening reception is on Saturday, November 2 from 5-7pm. The exhibition runs through December 7, 2024.

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

“Poets became the true accountants, and their ledgers showed the unprofitability of the human soul.“ - Michael Marsh

In The Danger of Having a Soul, Summer Mei Ling Lee’s second solo exhibition with re.riddle, the artist contemplates the origins of aliveness and the metaphoric weight of being, as experienced through hope, anguish, and resilience. In a world too often defined by suffering, how does one widen the space to hold lightness alongside darkness? Is there such a thing as an ecology of grief? The artist affirms that creative interventions and even modest acts of generosity can sweeten the losses that seem to accumulate over time, an inventory anchored by the menace of cynicism and perceived futility. Working across painting, sculpture, video, and mixed media, Lee delves into questions concerning the haptic experience of transcendence and the instinctual longing for freedom activated by consciousness.

Serving as the exhibition’s centerpiece, Li Sao, an altarpiece sculpture, is conceived as a physical manifestation of the ancient poem, “Li Sao,” or “the lament of being human” (dated 300 B.C.) In pre-classical Chinese, the title’s pictogram depicts a bird being caught and released. In the artist’s words, “The character Li depicts the irony of being human in that we are constantly caught and freed, both self and non-self, translated and liberated, here and there — as could only be portrayed by a human interfering with a creature of flight, as could only be elicited by a work of art.”

Lee’s video installation, The Danger of Having A Soul incorporates narrative elements to honor and document older members of her community, activists who have been challenging governmental abuses of land for decades. To the artist, these elders embody a persistence of care that also registers as an act of defiance, refuting nihilism and despair–those cumulative side effects of modernity that threaten to obscure the human spirit—with engagement, ingenuity, and solidarity.

In Ladder (video), Lee employs a humble ladder as a metaphysical bridge, connecting the intimate with the infinite, the earthly and the sublime. The minimalism that grounds much of her work offers the beholder an expansiveness for making meaning, beyond the parameters of existential causality. For Lee, the nature of “meaning” itself can be observed in the purity of seemingly simple events: the bird’s flight, the uninterrupted horizon, the ladder to nowhere in particular, and so on.

As a symbol for life itself, the bird has become a central motif in Lee’s exhibition, which serves to both unburden the viewer while reinforcing their agency, exposing the paradoxes that constitute the precarious and tender freedom of aliveness. In The Danger of Having a Soul, Lee’s body of work centers the bird like a religious icon, offering release from the weightedness of being, a postulate saint for the human soul.

Artworks

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