Travelling through Kathmandu International Airport on a visit to her parents, artist Maia Ruth Lee observed the ways that Nepali migrant workers secure their luggage from tampering and examination. In her first UK solo show, ‘Human Life in Motion’ at Primary, the artist presents five new sculptures from the series ‘Bondage Baggage’ (2018–ongoing), inspired by these methods. Made during the artist’s residency at Primary earlier this year, the works comprise items of luggage tied together with rope, canvas and other materials.
At nation-state borders, the migratory body is subjected to total scrutiny, its movement granted only through official documentation and quota controls. Lee’s sculptures draw attention to small acts of resistance against these invasive procedures: in one, three small parcels have been repeatedly bound and taped together to protect their contents. They are placed on top of a blue suitcase – one of several items loaned to the artist after she invited people connected to the gallery to share their personal belongings for use in these new works. Artist Sofia Yala and curator Raghavi Chinnadurai have both loaned pieces of luggage used by their families during migration.
Across the walls of the gallery has been painted a single green throughline the width of gaffer tape. In various cultures, green is the symbolic colour of safe passage. Lee’s intervention is reminiscent of Francis Alÿs’s The Green Line (2004), in which he walked with a leaking can of green paint along the armistice border of Jerusalem. Similarly, Lee’s green line explores the potential for creativity to exist in spaces of exclusion. Within the exhibition, this line is porous: rather than being used to police bodies, this border can be crossed by anyone who wants to enter the gallery.
In the second gallery is Bondage Baggage Banner (2024): six works hung in pairs from the ceiling joists that fall to the floor. Made using Lee’s ‘Bondage Baggage’ sculptures, the banners carry the imprints of the items of luggage, which have been covered in paint and ink then pressed against the canvas to leave knotty tracks on its surface. The networks of imprinted lines which make up these works resemble grid systems, route maps and radial lines – like those used to indicate routes of passage through the territories and nation-states that stretch across the Earth’s tectonic plates.
—Cathy Wade
