Nikki S. Lee
'It's safe', drones a hypnotised Leonard Zelig, star of Woody Allen's mockumentary Zelig (1983), 'safe to be like the others'. During the course of the film this 'human chameleon' morphs into a feathered Native American and a bearded Rabbi. At one point, a stall placard boasts 'We have photos of Zelig. Chinese. Intellectual. Overweight'.
Zelig's transformations could be the precursor of Nikki S. Lee's photographs - the word 'chameleon' litters the critical reception of her work. As in Allen's film, Lee plays with ideas about the immigrant's fear and the newcomer's desire to blend into their environment, but whereas Zelig was a fictitious character, Lee's personae are only fictitious to those who know her game. The significance of her work lies less in the interaction between the artist and the various crowds in whose midst she appears, than in the encounter the viewer has with her work in the gallery.
Looking at Lee's photographs is like watching a dull film that suddenly becomes perplexing. The clumsily cropped images look like ordinary snapshots - digital dates mark the corners and the camera flash has turned retinas red. But once you realise the same features appear in every image, the penny drops - Lee is in every photograph: a lesbian with the lesbians, a fly-girl with the Hispanics, an old lady on the street and a tourist visiting sites. The images are grouped into projects: 'The Lesbian Project', 'The Hispanic Project', 'The Seniors Project'.
Whether her disguise requires elaborate make-up or just fake jewellery and a line of lipstick, Lee looks completely at ease in each milieu. Although these images at first look 'natural', they eventually register as complex, even confusing, constructions. The photographs are unlike the seemingly comparable recent work of Dana Hoey or Justine Kurland, for example, in which everything is staged - Lee's images make it impossible to guess who was in on the act. In the photograph of a group of Hispanic girls getting ready to go out, The Hispanic Project (6) (1998), they appear to be doing what they do every weekend. Did they know that the new girl in their midst was an artist? How long did Lee spend with them before the photograph was taken? If not complicit with her project, are the girls being exploited? Who took the photograph? Looking for answers, the viewer draws a blank. Scrutinise more than one project, and any hope of really knowing what you are looking at is further complicated: some images seem to have demanded Lee's complete submersion in a sub-culture, while others, like The Tourist Project (10) (1997), taken on top of the Empire State Building, obviously required little more than an entry ticket, a tacky T-shirt and some sunglasses.
All of which amounts to a productive and amusing confusion. Lee's photographs are great satires - after all, nothing is more familiar than the image of a sightseer in front of the Statue of Liberty, her arm raised to greet the camera and mimic the monument or a picture of a group of growling grannies clutching walking sticks on a crowded bus. But this comedy of stereotypes is not as innocent as it seems. Lee's project ultimately seems less directed at sub-cultures than at a contemporary art audience. The comedy of the images works because Lee is not a chameleon, but an artist. A shared and secret understanding springs up between artist and viewer: we are not like the people with whom she appears and we can recognise the subtlety of the joke. But while flattering, this complicity lulls the viewer into a kind of snobbery. These photographs reveal a widespread indulgence of stereotypes: lesbian life is all short hair and body building, Hispanic leisure is shouting matches on the pavement. If the work exposes the assumptions of the audience, then perhaps it is the audience who are the butt of the last laugh.
Inasmuch as Lee's project directs attention from the images to the viewer, the apparent difference between her work and Allen's narrows. For just as Allen's film highlights the conformity of Zelig's society, Lee's work suggests contemporary prejudices. If Allen was also critiquing the compromised situation of the American Jew in the 20s, similarly Lee is engaging with her own ethnic identity - her position as 'the Korean' is the subtext of all the images, implying that if a viewer can laugh at 'The Hispanic Project', then they could also laugh at 'The Korean Project'.
