Site Unfolding

Site Unfolding (2023) is a multi-channel video installation that 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.

Written for the occasion it’s debut exhibition at Petra Bibeau (NY, NY) is the text, I Wonder if Waves Feel a Sense of Kinship According to How They Were Formed: A Cento, by Saretta Morgan.