Lindy Lee lights up Canberra

A DIGITAL artwork created by Coorabell artist Lindy Lee AO will illuminate the exterior of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra for the upcoming Enlighten Festival.

The 100 Flowers Falling projection embodies themes central to Lee’s practice, which has evolved from long-held questions around the Australian-born artist’s feelings of identity and belonging stemming from her Chinese ancestry.

Accompanied by a voiceover by the contemporary artist and an original score by Australian composer Lawrence English, the work follows the story of a young woman torn between her duty as a daughter and her desire for independence through a series of moving images that shift in colour, intensity and scale.

Lee said she was excited for Enlighten visitors to experience the ancient Zen story through the installation, which links the vastness of the cosmos with the intimacy of individual lives.

“Cosmos is the length, depth and breadth of everything that has ever existed, exists now, and will exist in the future,” she said. “It is intrinsic to us, and we to it.”

Lee’s $14 million immersive sculpture Ouroboros, which is based on the ancient image of a snake eating its own tail, also went on permanent display in the gallery’s National Sculpture Garden in October.

The sculpture will be lit internally at night throughout the festival, which runs from February 28 to March 10.

The installation also complements the gallery’s Lindy Lee exhibition, which is on display until June.

The exhibition showcases highlights of Lee’s career, as well as new works such as Charred Forest, which features camphor laurel trees that have been treated using the Japanese preservation technique of Shou Sugi Ban.

The technique blackens the logs before they are pierced with conical holes that resemble stardust.