Taymour Grahne Projects is pleased to present My Walk a solo show by California-based artist Tidawhitney Lek, opening on July 16th, 4 – 7 pm at the Holland Park space (10 Portland Road) as part of a joint opening across our 3 spaces.

In this latest series of works, Tidawhitney Lek ponders the maternal connection, specifically her own mother and the consciousness of inhabiting another’s perspective. She questions the responsibilities that come with motherhood; the struggles; the triumphs; and the life lived. The matriarchal woman depicted in each of the paintings is never fully realised head to toe, cheekbone to heel. Instead, one finds back turned heads covered with golden brown hair, eyes caught in the reflection of a pocket vanity mirror, or family scenes taken by a loving photographer. The presented crop view of Mother undertaking regular activities speaks to formidable a presence, an important undercurrent threaded throughout daily endeavours. Almost invisible, never wholly seen or front facing, she humbly carries out tasks to support the people around her. It may be Lek’s mother considered on the canvas, but she provides an exploration of universal caregiving that is relatable to all.

As the title My Walk suggests, the paintings offer Lek the opportunity to compare her own life to that of her mother’s. There are contrasts of period, age and choices that differentiate these two women’s experiences. Respect is founded in these divergences and sacrifices that any caregiver must give. Here, they are examined through philosophical introspections on canvas and the binds of a real-life daughter mother relationship. Lek recalls tactile, poignant memories when painting, and talks about her mother’s belongings, ‘I was thinking about the kinds of sampot (khmer skirt) she would wear and her heel shoes and where’d she go. My mother practices Buddhism and visits the temple at least twice a month carrying with her a special silver food container for monks offerings’. These personal recollections are heightened by Lek’s process of elevating them in paint, then re-experiencing them upon completion, and due reflection. The backdrop to these familial moments are strolls between the house and neighbourhood. Compilations of stucco walls, glittered concrete and gradient sunsets are interjected by plants and living things set against a greater cityscape of street signs and iron gates.

Accompanying the paintings are linoleum prints that have been a major part of Lek’s practice – now being exhibited for the first time. Lek sees them as ‘intimate drawings that feed directly into the paintings and part of the larger series’. In Sewing New Threads Lek’s mother is depicted in black and white, undertaking her first job in America, after she fled to escape the Khmer Rouge and a war-ravaged country. This powerful image references an emotionally charged circumstance juxtaposed with copious plants that are commonplace to Southern California. The works succinctly sums up Leks wider practice, straddling themes of identity and migration.

Tidawhitney Lek (b. 1992, lives and works in Los Angeles) is a Cambodian-American painter. Her work plays with narrative and the Asian experiences of second-generation born to immigrant parents. These bright and somber paintings present nuances of domesticity, figures and hands interacting in composition as culture and Southeast-Asian elements echo through mundane objects found from places like the home. She reinvents the traditional and conventional mediums like pastel, acrylic and oil paints on canvas, interchanging textures as pictorial spaces recede and soften. Lek graduated with her BFA from Cal State University of Long Beach with an emphasis on Drawing and Painting (2017). Her work has been exhibited at Sow & Tailor, Friends Indeed Gallery, and Jeffrey Deitch Gallery. Upcoming 2022 shows will be Taymour Grahne Projects in London and the Armory Show in New York.