Tidawhitney Lek

‘These paintings are my diaries..I’m literally in conversation with myself’

Tidawhitney Lek (b.1992) is a Southern Californian based Cambodian American artist who draws inspiration from her experience growing up as a first generation American born to immigrant parents. Lek’s paintings are acts of remembering; documenting scenes of everyday life as part of a large Asian family (she is the youngest of six children), she paints with a sharp eye for detail, conjuring images that explore issues of home and belonging. This quiet domesticity is offset, however, by the inclusion of darker and more disturbing narratives that hint at the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime from which Lek’s parents escaped and the subsequent sense of dislocation experienced. Disembodied hands, barbed wire, explosions, all co-exist in Lek’s canvases alongside iridescent pink and yellow LA sunsets and lush, green vegetation. ‘Family stories were in pieces,’ Lek explains, ‘scattered across a history that seemed out of reach, leaving me to wonder if I truly understood the essence of one’s roots.’

Tidawhitney Lekcompleted her BFA at California State University, Long Beach in 2017. Solo exhibitions include Long Beach Museum of Art, California; Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles; and Taymour Grahne Projects, London. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego; Cantor Arts Center Stanford University, Stanford; ICA Miami, Miami; Anat Ebgi, New York; and Ben Brown Fine Arts, London. Institutional collections include the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; and Pérez Art Museum, Miami. Lek has previously collaborated with Victoria Miro as part of the Miro Presents programme in March 2025.