I will be presenting new work in progress at this year's Encounter Bow, a one-day festival [Sat 12th June] exploring community care, spaces of joy and the importance of sharing and collecting stories.
三星 San Xing [Three Stars] is a feminist reimagining of Fu Lu and Shou - the San Xing, who in Chinese mythology represent fortune, prosperity and longevity. The work is a moving image portrait of three diasporic bodies that challenges Orientalist perceptions of East and Southeast Asian [ESEA] identities. Through a series of online workshops, I collaborated with actors @sigimoonlight and @elisabettygun and costume designer @christinetinghuanurquhart to devise the three characters. We drew on ESEA cosmologies to find new motifs and aesthetics to represent complex identities. These embodied aesthetics hold stories from the past, present and future of our diasporic experiences.
I'll be talking about Community, Care and Change at this online event hosted by gal-dem and Kickstarter. 'Arrive with an Idea Leave with a Plan' is a virtual workshop aimed at equipping people of colour from marginalised genders with the tools they need to turn ideas in to reality. The workshop on Thursday 11th March [6.30 - 8.30] encourages sign-ups from Yorkshire and the surrounding areas. Book a FREE place here.
My latest film, Where Two Rivers Meet will premiere on Feb 25th at 8pm GMT as part of the online event, Digesting History. The film is a creative documentary about Collections in Verse, a poetry project that took place in libraries across Sheffield just before the pandemic. Weaving the story of the project together with the story a city responding to crisis, the film explores mutual aid, things that connect us across time and place and posits the idea of the library as a commons. Where Two Rivers Meet is narrated by Johny Pitts [Afropean] and features new poetry by Joe Kriss, Rachel Bower and Kayo Chingonyi - inspired by the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms exhibition at the British Library and communities in Sheffield.
Commissioned by Poet in the City in partnership with Sheffield Libraries and the British Library.
My latest film, Casting Fu Manchu will premiere on 1st December at 7pm GMT. Commissioned from an open call by Chinese Arts Now [CAN], the film explores Yellow Peril in light of COVID related racism towards 'Chinese looking' people. Working with Casting Director Nicci Topping, I invited actors of East and Southeast Asian heritage to send me audition tapes of themselves in role as Dr Fu Manchu - 'yellow peril incarnate'*. Over 50 actors responded to the call with their subverted takes on the evil Chinese genius, who on screen, has only ever been played by white men. Extracts from the audition tapes form the basis of the film.
The premiere will take place online. followed by a live Q&A with Eelyn Lee. Book FREE tickets via the CAN website.
I've been invited by Write and Shine to facilitate an early morning creative writing workshop inspired by film. The session that will explore the narrative of sound and takes inspiration from the close relationship between film and memory. Join me online between 7.30 - 9.00am GMT on Tues 3rd Nov.
Casting Fu Manchu will be showing as part of this year's Estuary 2021. Programmed as part of The Telling Image, curator Gareth Evans has collated ten short films that respond to the festival's themes of climate, imperial legacy and rebellion. Screening FREE online from 22nd May - 13th June.
Casting Fu Manchu is currently showing as part of the CAN Festival 2021 [15th Feb - 30th Apr 2021]. Following the premiere screening these were some of the comments about the film,
"... a brilliant and thought-provoking concept ..."
"... poignant and beautiful ..."
"... a lockdown classic ..."
"... an intelligent well crafted piece of work which is like a skilled surgeon cutting out the cancerous tumour of the Yellow Peril ..."
There's an interview with me talking about the making of Casting Fu Manchu in Theatre Fullstop.
Following an invitation from CAMP, I will be presenting an online talk on Thurs 10th Dec 6.30 - 8.00pm GMT as part of their guest artist's programme. I'll be talking about Resilience and Radical Care in relation to my experiences of co-founding Social Art Network and subsequent involvement in other artist’s networks. The talk will cover network building as practice; solidarity; agency and mutual support; deep listening, and filmmaking and space holding.
Free for CAMP members, £3 for non members. Book here.
CAMP (Contemporary Art Membership Plymouth) – is a member-led network for the creative and visual arts community in Devon and Cornwall, including artists, producers, curators and arts writers.
Image: A production still from Futurist Women film shoot, 2018. Photo Credit: Matthew Kaltenborn
I've been co-curating the upcoming Parallel State event around the theme of Freedom. The event will be broadcast from a virtual Bristol, a few days after the US elections. Speakers include Dr Shawn Sobers, Zakiya McKenzie, Roseanna Dias and Tim Knowles. We'll also be presenting new work commissioned by the Parallel State from artist Joyce Treasure and musician Lavz, together with poetry from Jon Dovey and music from Roney FM.
We asked the four speakers to respond to the following provocation,
- Referred to as the Land of the Free since the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner were penned in 1814, America is supposed to represent liberty and opportunity. What does freedom feel like in Bristol and how does it speak to the structural failures of the UK and other failed states? With these thoughts in mind, what could freedom mean in the Parallel State? -
The Parallel State is a breakaway state - a space to collectively imagine alternative solutions to life on earth. Free from the constraints of being in constant opposition to the failed states in which we live, it is a space to build knowledge, to organise and prepare new visions for better ways of living. This is the first of a series of online themed events that will lay the foundations for a Parallel State Summit.
Multiplicities in Fluxbrings together works by Grace Lau and Eelyn Lee in a dialogue around identity, belonging, nationality and community in Britain. The curator of the exhibition, Marianna Tsionki writes,
" Lee’s film Britishness (2019) complicates the often indefinable notion of ‘Britishness’. Comprising spoken word poetry, interviews, and group discussions, the work follows young writers from Sheffield as they affirm, reject, and revise their visions of national identity and grapple with the consequences of Britain’s colonial history and their own personal experiences. The film posits ‘Britishness’ as a concept that is constantly in flux, moulded by ever-changing social, economic, political and historical narratives and carrying different significance for each individual. Through this lens, Lee invites viewers to question and re-evaluate their own definition of what it means to be British. "
There will be an online screening of Britishness as part of the accompanying Public Programme [date tbc].
CFCCA Revisioning Eelyn Lee has recently been selected to be part of an Artist Working Group comprising seven artists of Chinese heritage, who will partner with CFCCA to co-design their Revisioning process. Eelyn would like to acknowledge and thank artist JJ Chan for articulating their concerns about the under representation of Asian people/PoC within the staff team at CFCCA and for triggering this journey of structural change.
Wednesday, 29 January 2025 Eelyn has been commissioned to make a new piece of moving image work, to be exhibited at the Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival, 13-29 June, 2025; São Paulo Biennial, Sept, 2025, and the Karachi Biennial, Oct 2026. Building on her research and work made along the Thames Estuary in 2016, Eelyn will continue her exploration of the tidal Thames as a... Read More...
Thursday, 14 November 2024 An illustrated discussion with artist Eelyn Lee and writer-researcher, Dr Yen Ooi about their ongoing collaboration –a call and response creative dialogue between artist and writer. Drawing on migratory energies and ancestral stories, their work creates new orientations, shaped by East and Southeast Asian [ESEA] diasporic experiences. Book FREE... Read More...
Thursday, 15 August 2024 Ancestral Futures 源流之後 is a processional street performance in honour of the first recorded Chinese people in Sheffield –a group of magicians on tour from China who performed at the Whitsuntide Festival, 1855. On 31st May, 1855, the lead magician, Teh Kwei 德貴, buried his 5-week old baby in a Sheffield graveyard.... Read More...
