Using the fading craft of papercutting, artist Bovey Lee painstakingly renders images that are visual collages, social commentary and personal catharsis.

Introduced to the art form by her father as a child in Hong Kong, Lee later became drawn to its expressive potential and taught herself how to papercut before studying with masters of the craft in China and Switzerland. She forgoes the use of color, common in traditional paper cutouts, in order to emphasize linearity and the interplay between solid and void. Although Lee carefully plans her work with sketches and digital templates, she often leaves large swathes blank to allow for improvisation.

In these physically delicate pieces, cut by hand on tissue-thin rice paper, Lee unabashedly references events and memories from her own life. "Hollow" shows the artist as a caged peacock, her many arms adorned with the jewelry she inherited from her mother, which serve as a material comfort and reminder. Her Childhood Torture series intertwines memories of her past with the news of contemporary tragedies, juxtaposing childhood punishment and pain with allusions to car bombings. Lee's complex paper webs mingle reality and imagination, the personal and the public, forming intricately created worlds.

Writer Jane Ro

Jane Ro eats, sleeps, works and lives in New York City.