[All images from Kim Lee Kho's Flicker album]
I recenlty re-posted a 2015 article I wrote on artist Kim Lee Kho here where I discuss her "technique and intent."
I was preparing for other projects and filed away my notes on the exhibition for a later post.
Well perhaps it was that there was a LOT to dismantle.
Of course Kho is concerned with ethnicity and race because she is half Chinese and half white. But rather than address those issues directly, she started a series of work based around "skin" and barbed wire, as a metaphor for imprisonment and a harsh barrier (to the racists white-centric world?).
She uses her own scantily-clothed body that she presses onto a wired frame, distorting her skin with the pressure.
She then uses photographs of these images for a variety of projects.
One of them is to make a repeat pattern of the image.
At first there doesn't seem to be anything interesting with her exhibited patterns, unless, perhaps one gets close to them and realizes their origin.
Recently, when I looked up more of these patterned works, I realized that they resemble the patterns on snakeskin.
And in fact, a couple of her exhibitions have them hanging as though a snake had shed its skin. Or some enterprising shoe designer had prepared them for a future project.
I have written about snakeskin in contemporary fashion and correlated it to Eve's ploy with the serpent.
Kho is clearly not after fashion. She has no desire to make herself "beautiful."
What she has discovered is the supernatural, and the serpent and its nefarious influence gives her an entry into that world.
She fits well with contemporary artists' and their unblinking glare at evil, where we have, I believe, entered a new era of art.