Barbed Wire Series

Barbed Wire Series uses offset lithography—a planographic process that transfers ink from plate to rubber blanket to paper—to render imagery of barbed wire on BFK Rives, a heavyweight French cotton printmaking paper. The choice of offset rather than direct lithography permits identical multiples without the wear that intaglio plates suffer, suiting subject matter that addresses borders, enclosure, and the bureaucratic infrastructure of national boundaries. Barbed wire as motif sits within a long lineage of twentieth-century printmaking concerned with detention and partition; Lee's treatment connects that lineage to her ongoing work on immigration and the divided experience of inhabiting two countries. Where her drypoint animation projects rely on the burr's velvet line and the plate's gradual decay, here the offset process delivers crisp, repeatable mark—well suited to a motif that itself depends on industrial repetition. The work's flat surface and graphic clarity contrast with the looser, more painterly registers of her monotype series from the previous year.