A selection of work by artist Tidawhitney Lek from Long Beach, Southern California. Lek’s work is about identifying the Cambodian-American experience. Weaving together themes and identities of first-generation American, Southeast Asian, and female narratives, Lek tackles subjects like generational trauma and inherited histories, deconstructing meanings and nuances to create a universal tale on canvas. Her practice similarly draws on a variety of techniques and mediums often using charcoal, pastel, oil, and acrylic in addition to crushed black pepper and glitter:

“I share a point of view that touches upon the kind of domesticity that we as a community have grown in. It is a documentation as well as an interpretation of the mundane and everyday life surrounded by past and present stories…. Narratives are shaped by sunset color palettes and referenced images are juxtaposed in compositions to pictorial planes. The imagery are sourced from family photographs, self-taken photos, composites from the internet, sketched drawings, or found materials scaled to nearly life-size. In all, the work reflects the nature of the viewer falling into the painting as the painting falls into the place offering an ambiguous feeling of a shared world.”

See more from Tidawhitney Lek below.