Art as Activism: Joseph Lee

I grew up in Indiana as an only child. Because of the way I looked [and being Asian-American], it wasn't easy for me to make friends. I spent a lot of that time by myself, using my hands. I get a lot of my talents from my mom, who was always working around the house with her hands, making me clothes and sewing things. I grew up entertaining myself, making my own toys, building forts outside. In some weird way, I feel I'm still that same kid, but now I just play with different toys.

They weren't creative per se, but I think for them it was a safety thing. I was at home entertaining myself, making things, painting, drawing, doodling all the time and that beat me being outside causing trouble. I think they just saw it as a positive thing.

When I first started painting, it was just imitation-based. I didn't really have any philosophy and I just wanted to build technique. A lot of that came from viewing references and painting off of that.

I was briefly working in Korea three years ago. I was living in a hotel the entire time and wasn't able to have large canvases or a lot of materials that I work with on hand. I would go out and buy magazines and a lot of photography-based books and instead of having canvases, I would rip the pages out and paint directly over the images.

Emotionally, I was in a weird state when I was in Korea. I was there for an acting gig so I didn't have friends around or any of my natural comforts. Growing up, I didn't necessarily feel American. Moving to Korea I had this idyllic notion that, “if I were to ever go back to the motherland, I'd be accepted and everyone [would] look like me and that would be the ideal place to live”’.

There was an awakening in that I didn't feel that way when I was actually in Korea: I felt like an American instead. It was this in-between state of feeling like I didn't belong in either [America or Korea] and that turned into this weird identity crisis. It poured out into my art. I started stripping my own eyes, my own mouth, my nose, all the facial features that I recognize. I made everything ambiguous.

It’s been frustrating because I don't know how to articulate my emotions during this time. It's extremely layered and I think having grown up in Middle America, a lot of these microaggressions and racist acts were normalized for me.

When I moved to LA 10 years ago, there was this maturation process: I was almost reborn with this new identity being in this diverse and creative environment. Part of that process consisted of closing the door on a lot of those childhood traumas.

Fast forward to today and even though I'm in my 30s, even though I'm older, I feel I'm reverting back to that same kid who felt small, vulnerable and angry. I tie this back to the community and many of us feeling that same sense of confusion.

I have this painting called Second Guess Citizen and, ironically, it's not finished because I'm constantly second-guessing it. The painting started as a way to express this frustration of second-guessing everything. I realized that the way I was feeling was largely rooted in my own cultural experience. To second-guess one's every thought and motive and action is not unique to me, but it's very much a Korean-American experience and an Asian-American experience at that. It's a byproduct of constantly seeing yourself through someone else's lens.

Growing up largely around white people, there was this exhaustive feeling of constantly needing their approval in order to fit in, almost kind of like a survival tactic. I didn't want to fit into their stereotype of what they viewed as Asian. I needed to match their sense of hyper-masculinity. I felt like I could never show weakness. When you grow up within these mental constructs, it's really tough to acknowledge and embrace your own identity and your own community. With everything that's happening, the Asian community is finding this need to express themselves—that impulse to do something.

About two months ago, my wife and I left for Korea and got married. In LA, I felt very stagnant creatively but with Korea being near open, I met with a lot of artists outside the field of painting such as carpenters and it was really mind-blowing. I got to learn a fundamental life perspective through these people whose work is completely differentl to mine: it always starts from this giant chunk of tree but their process is to constantly trim the excess, trim what they don't need, and it always boils down to this one little piece that they use as their craft. I think I needed to trim the fat and excess in my own head and to get back to the basics. Having all these tragic terrorist events happening in our country, ironically, made me want to come back home and address a lot of those things through my work and get back in the studio and start painting again.

I have NFTs releasing and some sculptural collaborations that are coming out. I'm in talks to do a couple of shows in Korea as well. More importantly, everything that's happening right now has compelled me to find a specific direction in my work. My work up to this point has been very instinctual; I don't really plan, I don't really sketch, I just get in there and start creating stuff.

This is the first time I'm really going against that grain;  taking my time and trying to create something that has an emotional concept. I'm in a very privileged state where most of my inventory's been sold, so instead of feeling like I need to make money or bust out a painting, I'm taking a rest year to focus on this new collection that I want to do.

I have an eclectic mix of people who inspire me: Francis Bacon is definitely one of them and everyone from painter Jenny Saville to Howard Stern. I think the common thread is a sense of freedom that I admire from these names. It's something that isn't natural for me. Freedom is something that I strive for.