Image: The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C
The Phillips Collection has highlighted Sharon Cheuk Wun Lee’s ‘Afterimage: Borrowed Flora’, a contemporary work that examines the erased histories of Chinese women who immigrated to the United States. The work is included in ‘Tomorrow the Sun Will Rise: The Phillips Collection Juried Exhibition’, which the museum’s newsletter says is on view through September 20.
Lee’s work begins with 19th-century postcards depicting young Chinese women. Rather than preserving the figures as straightforward historical portraits, the artist reconfigures the postcards into what the exhibition description calls “empty relics.” At the centre of the transformed composition is a laundry chair, an everyday object that becomes the principal presence in the work.
The contrast between the historical postcards and the absent or displaced figures gives the work its central tension. The postcards retain a connection to the representation of Chinese women in the 19th century, while Lee’s reconfiguration directs attention to what those images leave out. The laundry chair shifts the focus from posed identity to domestic labour, memory and the traces left by lives that are no longer visually present.
The Phillips Collection’s newsletter featured Lee alongside other artists participating in the juried exhibition, including Joey Mánlapaz, Abdulrahman Naanseh, Se Jong Cho, Bria Sterling-Wilson and Kyle Hackett. The publication identifies Mánlapaz’s ‘No Mask, No Service’, Naanseh’s ‘They are Compelled’, Cho’s ‘Tile Mountain’, Sterling-Wilson’s ‘The Get Together’ and Hackett’s ‘After Return Investment’ as works presented in the same exhibition. Lee’s inclusion places her historical and image-based inquiry within a broader presentation of contemporary artists connected to Washington, D.C.
The Phillips Collection, located at 1600 21st Street NW in Washington, D.C., describes itself in the newsletter as holding nearly 6,000 acquired works across its 100-year history. Its current public hours are Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The newsletter’s image caption identifies Lee with ‘Afterimage: Borrowed Flora’ at the opening celebration of ‘Tomorrow the Sun Will Rise: The Phillips Collection Juried Exhibition’, which remains on view through September 20.
