DBCO (Co&Lee)

Biography

Co&Lee is a US-based collaborative artist duo working across installations, artist books, sculpture and painting. Their work examines the relationship between space and the self, and the practices of care or exploitation that comes with this exchange. DBCO, a member of Co&Lee, has studied in Curtin University Australia and the London School of Fine Arts. She holds an MFA Degree from the SMFA at Tufts. The duo have had solo and group exhibitions in the US, Germany and the Philippines. They are recipients of the Hamburg Art Fellowship, the Montague Travel Grant, the Domestic Travel Grant, the Dean’s Research Award, and the Tufts Graduate Research Competition Award. 

Artist Statement

Art is the love letter of my survival. As a third-culture individual living with disabilities, I navigate my search for home and reconciliation through my practice. I understand the world through nature, and explore its traditional and immaterial possibilities, from plein air representations to landscapes as language. As an artist, I am drawn to humour and horror, to the fragility of time and life, and to the paralysis brought by yearning and interaction. My work embraces repetition as a response to human obsession and labour, and serves as a way for me to communicate grief and resistance. 

My collaborative work with artist SangBin Lee explores how environments affect our sense of belongingness and identity. We are interested in the tension between place and body - how one navigates where they are welcomed or restricted. For us, spaces are sites of possibilities or of power dynamics and dehumanisation. Our practice is informed by the way movement has shaped us, whether it be in the form of migration or the embodiment of digital and physical spaces. Within our diasporic identities, we examine the complexity and multiplicity of our histories, and attempt to understand the masking, levels of conformity, and hopes we carry.  

Website: coandlee.com

Instagram: @coandlee