Li Lindi: Embrace a million experiences and reconcile with your own racial identity
China News Service, Beijing, April 2 Title: Li Lindi: Embracing Ten Thousand Experiences and Reconciling with Your Own Racial Identity
China News Service reporter Han Chang
In September 2021, the National Gallery of Australia (ANU) commissioned Chinese-Australian artist Lindy Lee to build a stainless steel sculpture, Ouroboros, the most expensive order in the museum's history, in the hope of setting a new standard for Australian public art when completed in 2024.
As an influential contemporary artist in Australia, Li Lindi often introduces herself to the outside world as "half Chinese, half Australian". Growing up at the end of the "White Australia Policy", she was confused about her racial identity. In the subsequent creative career, she gradually reconciled with her own identity, chinese identity and sense of belonging to Australia is not "bondage", but to embrace the ten thousand experiences in life, all of which make her different.
Li Lindi and her work: "Birth Death", 2003. Courtesy of respondents
Li Lindi was recently interviewed by the "East and West Question" column of China News Agency, analyzing and interpreting her understanding of overseas Chinese identity and the blending and mutual learning between different cultures.
In Li Lindi's early growth process, confusion and inferiority were themes that could not be escaped. This was closely related to the "White Australia Policy" at that time. At the end of the 19th century, many local whites complained that the arrival of Asian immigrants such as China had reduced the value of labor and angered Chinese cultural traditions. In 1901, after the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia, the first Conservative government established the "White Australia Policy" as a basic national policy, allowing only white immigrants to flow in, until it was abolished by the then Labour government in 1973.
In 1954, in the middle and late stages of the "White Australia Policy", Li Lindi was born in Brisbane. "It's a terrible government plan that makes it almost impossible for Chinese to get into Australia. Growing up, I remember feeling very bitter about my low self-esteem as a Chinese, which was a direct consequence of this policy. I felt that these ideas were unfair, but there was nothing to fight against them in my growth path. Li Lindi said.
Because of his racial identity, "for a long time I struggled with issues of identity and belonging, and when I was younger, whether in Australia or in China, I felt very uncomfortable in social situations, and I felt that neither place was real to me". She said.
Fortunately, when Lee Lindi was almost 19 years old (1973), "the last vestiges of the White Australia policy were abolished". This made her feel like she was born again.
Li Lindi believes that the abolition of the "White Australia Policy" has directly promoted the transformation of his self-perception. "When Australia turned to multiculturalism and embraced its own diversity, it started to give me a wonderful feeling! Let me know that people like me can be recognized and have legal rights in Australian culture, not just being on the fringes of the country. It gave me more confidence to pursue a life that seemed unlikely to someone like me: the life of an artist with my own voice. ”
In February 2022, melbourne, Australia, held a Chinese New Year celebration, and art groups from all walks of life danced dragons and lions in the city center and Chinatown, singing and dancing, and a large number of local people and overseas Chinese came to watch. Photo by Wang Xudong, China News Service
As an adult, Li Lindi began to chase her artistic dreams. At the time, she was the only Asian in an all-white community. At first, when she saw all the great works created by men, she became not an artist, but a high school art teacher.
In 1975, she graduated from the Kelvin Grove CAE School and moved to London, England. It was in European art museums that she saw the work of the Italian Baroque woman painter Artemisia Gentileschi and realized that it was possible and reasonable for women to become an artist.
After returning to Australia, Li Lindi, who began to work, drew heavily on reproductions of Renaissance art, especially the works of Artemisia Gentileschi.
Gradually, this led to her further creation, and her works began to be recognized by the outside world.
Changes in the external environment have also changed Li Lindi's heart. She began to embrace her "double legacy", namely her ancestral home of China and australia, where she grew up. Her visits to China in the early 1990s gave her a deeper understanding of her mother and grandmother and the stories of what they experienced before she was born. During this time, she came into contact with zen culture in Buddhism, which began to influence her artistic creation and helped the artist accept her "Chinese roots".
In April 2018, overseas Chinese in Australia held a ceremony to pay homage to the Yellow Emperor of Xuanyuan in Sydney. Photo by Tao Shelan, a reporter of China News Service
"For the first 20 years of my life, I didn't realize that I actually hated my Chinese identity. Much of this invisible hatred stems from the 'White Australia Policy'. As the policy was repealed, I felt free —something I had never felt before, which also allowed me to measure the pain I had experienced before, and the racism that prevailed in this policy was deeply imprinted in my heart. After that, I began to embrace my Chinese background, proud of it rather than ashamed. Li Lindi said.
In 1995, she made her mark on the Australian art scene with the highly colourful installation "No Up, No Down, I Am the Ten Thousand Things" for the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This is also the first work that reflects Li Lindi's thought. Behind this work, Li Lindi reflects Li Lindi's deep thinking about his own identity - he is a collection of ten thousand things, not just the individual self.
Li Lindi, now a well-known Australian artist who has taught at the Sydney College of the Arts for more than 20 years, believes that the shift in self-perception of Chinese and even Asians in Australia is not limited to her personally.
Li Lindi's sculpture "The Garden of Cloud and Stone", Chinatown, Sydney, Australia, 2017. Courtesy of respondents
"With the abolition of the 'White Australia Policy', so did many of the stigmas about racial differences, an environment that allowed the latest generation of Chinese Australians to grow up freely. I'm particularly aware of this because I've taught many Asian Australian students at university, and I've noticed that, from these generations, they're becoming more and more comfortable with who they are. She explained.
The reason why many master's and doctoral students choose Li Lindi as a mentor is precisely because of her insistence that "diversity and difference are the source of art".
"Many of the students I teach have racial, gender, or other issues. Many people find these differences to be a source of pain, but I used to say that we can take comfort in the fact that we have differences because we always have to look at things from multiple angles. If you want to be an artist, the ability to see things from multiple angles is a gift. My students have learned to translate what they call disadvantage into seeing the world in a richer, deeper light. ”
The "White Australia Policy" has been abolished for nearly half a century, and the pursuit of multiculturalism has become a value that Australia flaunts.
However, the spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has once again made overseas Chinese in Australia a victim of racial discrimination. Li Lindi's Ouroboros (Ouroboros) for the National Gallery of Australia this time has the theme of "inclusion".
"At the heart of my work is to explore the deep connection between humans and the universe," Lee said, "and my idea was to make a massive sculpture with an inclusive concept that has a deep and intimate experience of everything in the universe."
Li Lindi's "Life of Stars - The Tenderness of Rain", Zhengzhou Art Center, Henan, China, 2016. Courtesy of respondents
In recent years, many avant-garde artists of Chinese descent have emerged in Australia and even in the Western world. Speaking about this phenomenon, Li Lindi said: "The international art world has changed a lot in the past 50 years. Although the West still has a great influence in the art world, artists with diversity and richer colors are on the rise. In particular, artists Chinese mainland have gradually gained a foothold on the world stage. ”
After teaching at the Sydney School of Art for more than 20 years, Li Lindi and her husband moved to the Byron Bay area of New South Wales and worked in their own jungle studio.
In recent years, Li Lindi's exhibitions have remained a headline in the Australian contemporary art scene. In 2018, as part of the Adelaide Biennale, her sculpture "Life of Stars" was placed in the forecourt of the Art Gallery of South Australia for viewing. In 2020, in recognition of her achievements, the Australian Museum of Contemporary Art hosted Li Lindi's solo retrospective, "Lindy Lee: Moon in a Dew Drop."
For his achievements as a Chinese artist, Li Lindi admits that he has always been on the road to meet accidents, "One of my earliest Zen teachers once said: Epiphany is an accident. There is no absolute guarantee that the epiphany will happen to you, but you have to put yourself on the road to the unexpected and work hard every day." As for the secret of success, "all I have is to get back into my own life and devote myself to it".
"As time went on, decades passed, I began to understand that my job was neither to be a 'decent Australian' woman nor to be a 'decent Chinese' woman, and I had to stand up and be myself completely: it wasn't an either-or relationship. To be true to yourself, you have to embrace the ten thousand experiences that have given you life, all of which have set us apart. Li Lindi said. (End)
Respondent Profiles:
Lindi Lee and her sculpture "Secret World of a Starlight Ember", Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, 2020. Courtesy of respondents
Lindy Lee, a well-known Chinese-Australian artist, was born in Brisbane to Chinese immigrant parents. Spanning a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation and public art, her work is rooted in Australian and Chinese traditions and has developed a trajectory that blends art history, cultural authenticity, individual identity and cosmology. Representative works include Moon in a Dew Drop, No Up, No Down, I Am The Ten Thousand Thing, and Moonlight Deities.