Lee Mingwei

In his participatory works, he invites strangers to join together in simple everyday rituals, such as eating, sleeping, writing letters and engaging in conversation. By staging these highly intimate, personal encounters, the artist creates the potential to build moments of sociability, understanding and trust.

In The Mending Project (2010), Lee used the activity of sewing as a means to draw strangers together in communal encounters. Visitors were asked to bring items of clothing that need mending and sit with the artist while he darned these at their side. Rather than restoring or hiding the tear in the cloth – as a tailor usually would – he celebrated it with a vivid rainbow-like embroidery stitched from brightly coloured threads. In this way, he offered a counterpoint to the throwaway mentality of the modern world.

Rather than mere commodities to be discarded when no longer needed, clothes are here reinstated as objects invested with great personal value, their fabrics interwoven with memories of the past. During the course of the exhibition, the mended garments accumulated, the material remnants of a series of fleeting conversations, stories, memories and thoughts.

Hemmed in by tailor’s curtains to create an atmosphere of intimacy and calm, The Mending Project (2010) created a welcome respite from the humdrum noise of the street and the loneliness experienced by many people living in modern cities. At the heart of this work is the desire to re-instigate moments of closeness and shared understanding between strangers. In life, these moments sometimes occur when people waiting in a queue, or standing at the bus stop, catch each other’s eye, unexpectedly smile at one another, or strike up a conversation. They are the moments of recognition and connection between individuals that can make life meaningful, but that are frequently lost in the impersonal transactions that take place in supermarkets, malls and other large-scale shopping venues. Lee was on site for the first two weeks of Touched, after which time he passed the role on to other menders who would carry out the work for the duration of the exhibition.

The Mending Project, 2009
Interactive installation, one 3-metre table, 2 wooden chairs, 400 cones of thread

Exhibited at 52 Renshaw Street