Artshack Gallery is pleased to present Corpus, a solo show by Artshack member Gabriel Lee.

Through organic forms, monstrousness, and expressive fragments of the body, Lee explores transgender identity and relationality, alienation, and the subjectivity, strangeness, and beauty of embodiment. Their process involves experimenting with the unique affordances of different mediums and allowing those qualities to shape their work. They often incorporate text and wordplay, examining language as a tool for worldbuilding and self-determination. Using repetitive, accumulative forms, they evoke the processes by which living creatures define and redefine themselves, moving through the world as patterns rather than fixed subjects.

This show collects Lee’s most notable pieces since they began working with clay in early 2020, exploring organic forms, monstrousness, and expressive fragments of the body. The centerpiece of the collection is a mixed-media manananggal, a Filipino monster who passes as a woman by day. By night it detaches its torso from its lower body, then flies through the night seeking viscera and especially unborn fetuses to consume with its proboscis-like tongue. Lee’s manananggal is full of language about how trans bodies and worlds are shaped through words — the sensor-speaker circuit embedded in their forehead tells secrets to approaching confidants, and their guts contain metabolized comments from across the internet.

Gabriel Lee (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist primarily working in graphic art and ceramics, focusing on embodiment and language. They received their BA from the University of California, Los Angeles.