Artist

Exhibition | ‘A Temporary Futures Institute’

Alexander Lee was born in Stockton, CA, and grew-up on the island of Tahiti, French Polynesia. He earned his BFA from the School of Visual Arts (2000), his MFA from Columbia University (2002), and MPS from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University (2004). Lee’ s 2006-2007 trilogy, THE DEPARTURE OF THE FISH, titled after the creation myth of the island of Tahiti, turns a narrative material, through volcanic sand and the vernacualr of natural history museum displays, storytelling, and the anthropic process. In 2014, Lee’s THE BOTANIST, a visual retelling of the legend of the breadfruit through early English botanical endeavours in the Pacific, is the beginning of a subsequent series, THE BOTANICAL FACTORY that tackles the cultural practice of oral history through communal efforts. In 2017, TE ATUA VAHINE MANA RA O PERE for the 1st Honolulu Biennale, draws an evolutionary trajectory between Pele and the nuclear mushroom cloud, in reference to the US and France’s Pacific test sites. THE SENTINELS, a continuous wall painting spanning 4500m2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, visually hosts A Temporary Futures Institute, making apparent the motifs and signs of Polynesia as the environmental matrix to Futurist James Dator’s thinking. Most currently, ME-TI’A, An Island Standing, is a meditation on the images that an uninhabited island conjures, and human interactions through technological progress. It premieres as part of Tidalectics at the TBA21 / Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Wien.