Tidawhitney Lek | Making a House Hold at Sow & Tailor

Los Angeles art gallery Sow & Tailor have announced that they will be exhibiting Tidawhitney Lek’s “House Hold,” starting February 13th and ending March 20th. “I’m super excited,” she says about revealing her first ever show. “And what better place than where I grew up, in Southern California?” The collection of oil, pastel and acrylic depicts spaces of home life, familial figures, household objects, and traditions carried through immigrant families.

The exhibition took about five or six months to come together, but Lek, a 2020 finalist for the Department of Cultural Affairs public arts commission, said ideas were swimming around in her head the whole time. The inspiration, comes from “trying to explore the context I was diving in with family narrative and first-generation immigrant parents,” she says. “Towards the end when the paintings were coming together I was trying to grasp the household I was living in.” Her paintings reflect her personal family history with specific meaningful objects, but each painting offers a glimpse into a situation or a scene anyone can recognize. Often inspired by family photographs, her memory and feelings persist in every piece.

The vivid and detailed paintings were partially inspired by Italian frescoes. She says she was trying to capture this look, but also pull into things she can remember from the 90s or her childhood. This juxtaposition took work, but wasn’t the hardest part of the process. "Trying to address what I wanted to say about these figures and the representation and violence” was the main challenge. “When I put them together it’s very abstract, things don’t make sense, but I always place myself,” she says.

Generational trauma and frustration finds its way through the pieces. There’s a feeling of violence with the glistening knives, hands emerging from behind heavy skillets, or a woman peeking out from a closet. Lek’s ideas and paintings explore the duality that exists in her own experiences, and the anxiety is palpable in distinct ways.

Above all else, Lek wanted to take the time to get to know the process and appreciate how a painting comes to be. Before the paint hits the canvas, she said, “There’s room to consider and appreciate the object for what it is.” She prefers oils, but the integrity of the surface is most important to her. “The process is what it took to truly understand the subject matter.”