Walk 2010

Walk 2010 is a 198-print drypoint sequence assembled into stop-motion animation depicting the act of walking—Lee's most basic recurring motif and a structural metaphor for the immigrant condition of perpetual transit between places. Each frame is pulled from a separately incised drypoint plate, with the needle's burr producing the soft, slightly furred line that distinguishes the technique from engraving or etching. The serial labor required—scratching, inking, and pressing nearly two hundred plates—makes the work's runtime, when animated, a fraction of its production time. This is a defining piece in Lee's early animation series and establishes the working method she expands in subsequent years: Hana's Ride (327 prints, 2014) and Dance, Dance, Dance (342 prints, 2011) both scale the same approach. The choice of walking as subject also carries through her wider practice: the city as a sequence of footfalls, the immigrant as a person who walks new ground, and the print as a record of one foot following another.