The Walking Mountain, 2023
Sandra Eula Lee is a multidisciplinary artist who transforms ordinary and found objects for the purpose of exploring notions of permanence. This exhibition showcases selections from The Walking Mountain series, which primarily consists of over 80 drawings created since 2014. Ranging in size, the drawings incorporate varied materials such as ink, watercolor, graphite, colored pencil, thread, and relief print on different papers and fabric. Lee’s diverse compositions feature meticulously arranged mounds of rocks, outlines of rock formations, and geometric shapes with radiating lines.
The artist was inspired to create this series after encountering piles of stones in the mountains of South Korea, while she was living in Seoul. She explains, “I [saw] this form repeated in daily life—piles of rubble from demolished buildings, piles of brick and concrete waiting to be used for construction, burial mounds from the land; simultaneous states of orientation, deterioration, and becoming.”
The title of this series refers to a concept from a Japanese Buddhist sutra by the philosopher Dogen Zenji. He writes: “Because mountains and waters have been active since before the Empty Aeon, they are alive at this moment … Mountains’ walking is just like human walking.” The artist notes that the mountain’s movement “may appear different from a human’s but we know they walk because their heads are in the sky and their feet are in the water.” This expansive collection of drawings is a reflection on the interconnectedness of human experience, migration, and geological shifts. By juxtaposing subtle landscape transformations with rapid urban development, Lee reveals the relative nature of the passage of time.