MULTIPLE SELVES: Nikki S. Lee’s Projects

Abstract

Between 1997 and 2001, New York-based South Korean conceptual photographer Nikki S. Lee created a series of performative photographic works titled Projects. To make these works, Lee infiltrated select social and cultural groups, including drag queens, exotic dancers, yuppies, Latinos, black hip-hoppers, lesbians, senior citizens, neo-swing dancers, Japanese youth, skateboarders, Ohio trailer-park dwellers, Asian tourists and Korean schoolgirls. Lee dramatically altered her appearance through a blend of clothing, makeup, diet, hair extensions, use of hair dye and tanning salons. After transforming herself, in her own words, into someone who looks like “eighty percent of any person from whichever group,” Lee approached each chosen community with a point-and-shoot camera and announced her artistic intention of becoming a member for a short period of time. She adopted their postures, behaviours and mannerisms and joined in their everyday activities. As a record of her temporary membership, Lee asked a friend or a passer-by to take snapshots of herself in the disguise of other group members. This article draws on the theoretical works of Alison Weir, José Esteban Muñoz and Paul Gilroy in the discussion of Lee’s performative photographic works, which image and imagine identity as relational, formed and reformed via identification with diverse others. It investigates how Lee’s practice, via strategic engagement with vernacular popular cultures and stereotypical images of varied social and ethnic groups, might forge intercultural, interpersonal interactions marked by spontaneous tolerance and openness outside governmental initiatives, and provoking new reflections on one’s encounter with alterity and difference.