Tidawhitney Lek: Marooned on Foreign Feelings

Introduction

Victoria Miro Projects is delighted to present Marooned on Foreign Feelings, an exhibition of new work by LA-based artist Tidawhitney Lek. This is the eighth project in an ongoing series of presentations by invited international artists on Vortic.

Tidawhitney Lek’s paintings offer an intimate meditation on notions of memory, displacement and cultural identity. Drawing inspiration from her upbringing as a first-generation Cambodian American, her layered compositions seamlessly blend memory and reality. By combining personal narratives of her early childhood with broader themes of home and belonging, Lek invites viewers to engage with the complexities of selfhood, assimilation and storytelling. She views her works as realms in which ‘Identity seems like an endless journey of unravelling and reckoning across generational timelines and personal histories.’

Reflecting on her experience growing up, the artist notes, ‘Family stories were in pieces, scattered across a history that seemed out of reach, leaving me to wonder if I truly understood the essence of one’s roots. I suppose there was always a disconnect, that it was only the surface that I witnessed in others and myself, and what I could not see was the whole that had been.’

Seeking to explore beyond the surface, the dreamlike worlds in Lek’s paintings are inspired by myriad sources – photographs, some taken by the artist, of nearby beaches, local markets, familiar domestic interiors and the distant homeland of her parents – woven together and often set against the backdrop of a southern California sunset. The paintings on view employ a combination of techniques. The use of acrylic paint in thin watercolour-like washes seems to recede from the viewer and is juxtaposed by the opacity of oil paint, pastel, and glitter in the foreground of her scenes.

Lek deconstructs, examines and reshapes her sense of self, navigating the tension between her family’s past and her present. Her work reflects on how inherited histories are reinterpreted, altered, or even lost through adaptation. As she describes, ‘In the end, I’ve been marooned, left to face the definite yet unfamiliar landscape of assimilation.’

A new painting, Made in Cambodia, 2024 by Lek will be included in the ‘Galleries Together’ for LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund initiative at Frieze Los Angeles.

Audio clips, which can be listened to while navigating the virtual exhibition, have been taken from Lek's personal recordings and family videos.

Works

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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.

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