Goodbye to All That

CELINE LEE

Celine Lee’s (b. 1993) works often revolve around rudimentary scientific and mathematical concepts and principles in an attempt to understand contemporaneity. A recurring theme in her body of work is the exploration of time and space and the transformation into tangible forms of abstract concepts. Lee graduated with honors from the University of Santo Tomas in 2015 with a BFA degree in Painting and recently received the Juror’s Choice Award of Merit at the Philippine Art Awards (2020).

Her work, “Untitled”, consists of twelve Abaca sheets that correspond to each calendar month and carry the word “Xie Xie” written in Chinese characters; the word translates to “Thank You” in the English language. The sheets are then tainted with bleach, a process that Lee had started since the global outbreak of the Coronavirus to inject disinfection as an artistic process. The work alludes to the ironies in words that are often placed in the context of a general feeling of positivity but are also used in times of predicament and rejection as in the phrase, “No, thank you.”