Opened 18th March at 5.30pm


Between day and night,
Between sky and earth,
I wish to stand firmly,
To act as two instead of one,
To embody differences into the sameness of existence.

Inspired by Thomas McEvilley, in Art and Otherness: Crisis in Cultural Identity.


Many people today are caught in lives of transition, sometimes in exile, or transient between countries, unable to claim a sense of belonging either to their ancestral home or immigrated country. Movement or mobility occasioned by globalisation might be viewed as a sign of freedom and individual agency. Conversely, it may also be seen as a symptom of powerlessness, non-belonging, and displacement. There is a great difference between those who travel for leisure and those who are displaced or decentred. Those displaced energies are energies that are between places, spaces, cultures, and languages. In this sense, all things are slightly off-key, different and non-linear, but from here one may catch a glimpse of an interesting composition where each of them is dancing together to many independent melodies, sounded together.


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Rozana Lee is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, of Indonesian-Chinese heritage. She holds an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts. Her practice investigates how cultural dynamism can be felt as togetherness or belonging, without being grounded in homogeneity. Drawing from her family ‘s history of migration, she seeks different rhythms, contours, and experiences as coexisting, sympathetic, and reconfigured. Working across textiles, installations, and moving images, she explores the life of particular communities that allow for something shared, both within and beyond national and geographic boundaries. Recent exhibitions include Reconfigure(d), Guangzhou, China, 2019; Two Oceans at Once, St Paul St Gallery, 2019, and (Be)longing Reconfigure(d), Window Gallery, 2019. Lee is a finalist in a number of New Zealand art awards and the joint winner of People Choice Award for Estuary Art and Ecology Prize 2018.

Photography by Hendrix Hennessy-Ropiha
Design by Riley Karl
Sponsored by Parrotdog