Fracturing time

I imagine that Lindy Lee holds a crucible of molten bronze. She prepares her body; her stance and mindset have already determined the outcome of the piece before she flings the liquified metal. The bronze creates a tangible record of the instant it solidifies. This eternal moment implies the many moments that came before. A map of every instance is created. It culminates in a golden, highly polished organic conglomerate.

Lee’s practices unravel Western understandings of time as linear and episodic. In 2017 I suffered a trauma, something Lee might refer to as a ‘deep wound’. Post traumatic stress disorder destabilises time: I was constantly unmoored from the present moment and jettisoned back in time. It felt as if time itself ruptured. I was genuinely reliving the past in some capacity.

Lee burns holes through sheets of large sheets of metal in a different series of artworks; ‘The intuition towards things is an irresistible gravitational pull, but it took me a long time to trust that process’¹. Lee’s instinct and person is embodied in each perforation. The once solid piece of metal becomes fragile and warped, resembling the knees of well-worn jeans or moth-eaten fabric.

When Lee is transforming the physical aspects of the metal sheeting, she is also changing their temporality. Conversely when she performs the action of burning holes, the interaction with the metal changes her temporality. Both she and the metal meet in the present moment, which stays embedded within each of them.

When I look at the resulting artworks, I can imagine that moment. I can conjure it up. Perhaps not exactly as it happened, but those moments are reoccurring. I do not hold the belief that once something happens it is over forever. The past can be dredged up, disrupting the present. This may be why I am so drawn towards Lindy Lee’s artwork.

Nonlinear time in Lee’s pieces is not the stark interruption I am accustomed to. The marks are considered and purposeful. To Lee, when she ‘[burns] holes or [draws] circles, with [her] kind of Zen training [that] moment is eternity’², the grounding energy permeates through the art and prolongs that present moment, extending it to others. Each rupture of the seemingly solid metal changes perception of the material, reminding us that everything has capacity to change.

Lee practices Zen Buddhism, and this pours into her work. Within Buddhist beliefs time doesn’t occur to physical objects but manifests within them. In Each Moment is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, Dainin Katagiri explains that time is a force that can bring together and separate³. My temporal disturbances are an example of time’s ability to split apart while Lee's works bring time together. Though perforation could be considered a violent act, in Lee’s work it is gentle, as if the metal is as accepting to changing as the artist is to changing it.

I look at the artworks and see the universe. There is something poignant in this sight: small and considered moments have come together to create a cosmos. Time is unpredictable but perhaps practicing intentionality can mend the rifts between my past, present and future.

This story is part of the 2024 Young Writers Digital Residency.