Belonging is not about fitting in. Because fitting in, you're always trying to suppress something in order to make sure the other person is feeling comfortable. But belonging is stepping up and being thoroughly who and what you are. And that is a constant practiceLindy Lee
Hosted by Yumi Stynes, SEEN is a podcast series about the trailblazers who persist and succeed without positive role models in mainstream culture.
In this season you'll meet trailblazers like pro surfer Pauline Menczer, renowned artist Lindy Lee, community chef Duang Tengritrat, Tiwi Island Sistagirl Crystal Love Johnson, and more. Hear how these women defy convention as they grow older.
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Credits
Host: Yumi Stynes
Producers: Laura Brierley Newton, Olivia O'Flynn
Sound Design and Mix: Ravi Gupta
Executive Producer: Kate Montague and Lorna Clarkson
Theme Music: Yeo
Art: Evi O Studios
SBS Team: Joel Supple, Max Gosford and special thanks to Caroline Gates
Original concept by: Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn
LISTEN TO
Lindy Lee: Legendary artist coming into her prime at the age of 70
SBS Audio
27:46
Transcript
LINDY LEE: In Chinese culture, it was absolutely understood that when a woman turned 50, she had done enough service in her life and she could choose her own direction. So at 50, I decided to go and basically meditate on Huangshan, you know, that cloudy mountain thing.
That's it. I just love that. Yeah. It's a good sentiment. I reckon that's something maybe we can put forward.
(Theme music)
YUMI STYNES (Voiceover): I'm Yumi Stynes and in this season of SEEN, I'm unapologetically looking for inspiration from older women.
I want to talk to fearless female nutbags who are in their third act. Women who have lived full lives, done amazing things, and found a fresh sense of purpose in their older years.
As I near my 50s I think it’s time to consult the experts! So I’m going to ask them - what is the secret sauce to staying relevant and creative?
I hear a lot of negative stuff about growing older - menopause, ageing bones, wrinkles and women's increasing feeling of invisibility.
But what do I have to look forward to?
How do older women continue to kick ass?
We start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we record... the Gamaragal [Cammeraygal] people and Gadigal people, and their elders past and present.
(Music)
Lindy Lee truly is a woman kicking ass. So of course I wanted to talk to her for this podcast.
It’s worth mentioning that I had spent time with Lindy in her studio in the Northern Rivers of NSW a few months before we recorded this interview, so if we sound relaxed with each other, it’s because we’ve already hung out. It’s possibly also because she’s cool as shit!
This time we caught up over a pretty dodgy online link, which you might notice in the audio quality - hopefully you’re so riveted you don’t mind….
And one more thing: My whole life I’ve had a shorthand with and an ease around other Asian women.
LEE: Of course my first reaction was, why are you asking me about aging, why are you talking to me?
STYNES: I'm 25!
LEE: I’m 15, you know that!
STYNES: We've all frozen at some age, and often our fashion stops at that age as well. And we're like, you know, I'm still going to dress like I'm 25. That's just, you know, it was, I was in my prime. Thus it shall continue.
LEE: Yeah. And thus it does continue. You are in your prime, darling, yep.
STYNES: Oh my God. So are you. It's good to be in our prime, isn't it?
STYNES (Voiceover): The women on this season of SEEN have in common many things: Overcoming adversity. A daily practice that helps keep them grounded. Purpose and inspiration.
Lindy Lee has all of those things.
Lindy is one of Australia's most respected and renowned artists, but her story began with her family's migration.
STYNES: Lindy, how did your parents end up in Australia?
LEE: My grandfather was the first person to come to Australia - probably in the late 1890s sometime. And he made his life here and would just go back to China every five years or something. And then he was married. I mean, it's a very Chinese thing. So he lived and worked in Australia and his wife and his children were back in China.
Dad just decided that this was an opportunity and he needed to do it. So he did that, but unfortunately because of White Australia, my mum and my two brothers were left behind in China. And it was about eight years until they were reunited.
STYNES (Voiceover): ‘White Australia’ was the local term for an Immigration Restriction Bill that was designed to “Keep Australia White” by limiting the immigration of anyone black, brown or yellow. It meant that while Lindy's dad could go and work in Australia, he could not bring his family over.
(Music)
The family was stuck in China and split in two.
But Lindy’s formidable mother wasn’t going to sit and wait to be rescued.
LEE: It was 1946, so it's just after the Second World War, Japanese invasion, and China is just beginning to be in civil war, basically, because it was the communist revolution.
My mum, what a woman. She learned how to trade gold when she was about 16. So she would go down to the gold markets and in her voice, she said, Oh, I just go study. Oh, gold go down.
I buy, it go up. I sell, I make the money that way. So she, yeah, I mean, she's gorgeous. She's always been such an inspiration of resilience, of courage, of kindness, with a great sense of humor. So, you know, that was my mom. And so she, she got sick of waiting for dad to get the proper visas because it was complicated.
So she tricycled with my two brothers to basically the New Territories to cross over into Hong Kong. And she forged a letter from her uncle who was in Hong Kong. And the letter was saying, I must have my niece because there's very bad business going on. Like, she just wrote this lie. And then she handed it to the border and she was passed through.
STYNES (Voiceover): Lindy’s mum managed to pass the border into Hong Kong using the forged letter, but she had to wait another three years before Lindy’s dad could arrange a visa for herself and their sons to go to Australia.
STYNES: And is it true she was pregnant and sleeping on the floor in Hong Kong?
LEE: Yeah, she and my brothers were sleeping on the floor. They would go to the uncle's shop and they would sleep on the floor at night and then they'd have to get up at six and tidy everything up, so, and put everything away, so they could do business.
STYNES (Voiceover): These formative stories have been a major part of Lindy's art.
(Music)
LEE: I have done a work called The Seamless Tomb, and it's one of the personal, one of the most important works that I've done, just because it's a photograph of my father, my mother, her sister, and my oldest brother. And in that photograph, she is six months pregnant. She said, oh yeah, that, that photo, that day your father left for Australia.
And, my heart just, it wrenches. Fancy, you know, she's six months pregnant. She's in a country that is in civil war. And she's got a little boy. And she doesn't know when she's going to see her husband. I just can't imagine the pain of that.
STYNES (Voiceover): Finally, in 1953, Lindy's mum and her two sons moved to Brisbane, to be reunited with Lindy's dad.
One year later, Lindy was born.
STYNES: What was it like growing up in Brisbane in the 50s and 60s as a Chinese Australian?
LEE: Horrible. Look, you know, of course I had friends, of course I played, and friendships were made, but it's things like mum and dad didn't encourage us to speak Chinese because they thought it would be better if we just were really Anglo as much as possible
Which they did it as a kindness, but the reality is, that you internalize there must be something wrong with being Chinese, if I'm not even allowed to speak my own language. I mean, it's just these seeming little things, but they, they sort of, um, aggregate in your soul and they just become really painful.
And of course there was always that schoolyard bullying because, you know, I have this face in a largely entirely white school.
STYNES (Voiceover): When Lindy had her first boyfriend, the mother of her best friend took Lindy aside and said - “hey don’t you think you should be going out with your own kind?”
Such a painful and confusing question.
LEE: It's like, Wow. Okay. What does that mean? So I had to spend a lot of my growing up in my twenties, trying to unpick all of those wounds or just, just, just to see them.
I was in denial. Because I'm quite, I can be quite a social person and quite engaging, et cetera, et cetera. So it covers up a lot of the pain and distress I was actually feeling. I was talking to Auntie Jude Barlow who, who's the Ngunnawal Elder in residence at the NGA. And she and I have become like sister friends. We are so tight. It's, it's, it's marvelous. And we were talking about how we would make the first racist joke, because that meant it was mine and you can't do that. So it's like, it was a terrible strategy, but it was a strategy that I learned.
It's like, make fun of yourself first and nobody else will do it too, because you already owned it.
And that worked. But when you really think about it, that's ridiculous. Why should I have to do that, you know, in order to be accepted? So it's all those seemingly small things. It wasn't that I was ever, sort of physically hurt by it, but emotionally it was very scarring.
STYNES: Do you have memories of being, a sort of horny teenager, craving to connect with someone and, have that sort of human touch, but being a bit untouchable?
LEE: Absolutely.
STYNES: Because of… Yeah, I remember that too. It's just like because of this, the rating system, I'm automatically minus 10.
LEE: Yeah. Oh, you know, people were very patronizing, sort of doing me a favor to include me, you know, Oh, we're not talking about you as being, you know, that awful Chinese stuff, but you're fine.
I know what you mean, boys weren't really interested in me, because ‘what is that?’ is basically what I saw in their eyes. And who are you and why would I want to, you know. So that's also very discouraging when you're growing up.
(Music)
STYNES (Voiceover): Lindy Lee’s story is the story of a creative impulse so strong that it couldn’t be extinguished, co-existing with painful self-doubt from an entire life of being told you don’t belong, you’re not one of us, you’re not attractive, you’re an outsider.
LEE: The first moment I realised that I wanted to be an artist was when I was about three. We were living in Kangaroo Point in Brisbane in an old Queenslander.
I remember lying on my tummy doing drawings and you know, the sun was streaking in and I saw all these dust motes floating and it was magical, you know, as a kid, you see this thing and it's like, what is that?
And from that moment I wanted to capture that magic. And only since I've been doing the kind of work that I'm currently doing, have I remembered that little girl. So that little girl wanted to be an artist from that moment, she wanted to capture this magic.
STYNES (Voiceover): The artist was born, but this was 1960s Australia.
LEE: I remember this school boy at the bus stop and him rabbiting on about his dad thinks, my dad says, um, that women can be quite good cooks, but never a great chef. I wanted to punch his lights out, but, but a big part of me bought it, you know, because that's, that was the prevailing attitude.
STYNES: Were there any other Asian women making art at the time?
LEE: No, not, not that I know of anyway. Um, in fact, I could hardly see any women making art at all.
I had believed the propaganda so deeply and it took me a long time to get that stuff out of my head.
STYNES: Well, you're breathing it in every day as well. The propaganda doesn't die off or quieten down.
STYNES (Voiceover): Side note: I used to love rock n roll. Still do! But I knew music existed in a system that kept women out. So while I should’ve been aiming to be a rockstar, I didn’t even aim to be a musician - I wanted to be a music photographer, or a music journo, or the girlfriend of a rock star.
Lindy’s story is so, so similar.
LEE: I just tried everything else art related, but not being an artist, cause I really honestly didn't think women could do it.
So when it was time for me to choose a career direction, I would do graphic design. I would do high school art teaching. I went and studied art history.
STYNES (Voiceover): The constant denial of her artistic impulses - the strangling of her muse - started to have an impact on her mental health.
LEE: So I was actually very depressed in my twenties and I was actually suicidal and hospitalised.
Because of all of the stuff you breathe in and it becomes your belief and you're a failure and you can never be good enough. And there was so much shame about being Chinese. And yet I was still in denial.
STYNES (Voiceover): Throughout this time, there was a small but insistent voice deep inside that became harder to ignore.
LEE: Until finally actually that voice started to say, you have a choice here - you can live a reasonably comfortable life, but it will be unfulfilled if you go back to teaching. That's okay, you know, but there's going to be this low grade virus you're going to be living with all of your existence. Just think about that.
And then there's this other terrifying thought that I really need to be an artist. And I absolutely knew that I would fail. But then I sort of like, but which is the biggest failure? To live the life, it's kind of satisfying, but basically there's something deep inside of me, completely unmet and unseen. Yeah. And then there's like, then, okay, I just decided to jump.
STYNES (Voiceover): One of the consistent messages I've heard from guests throughout this series is how important it is to be able to see someone, who's a bit like you, doing what you dream of doing - like young Pauline watching female surfers competing and thinking - “if those girls can do it, so can I…”
For Lindy, it was a trip to Italy that gave her that moment.
(Music)
LEE: I went to the Uffizi Museum in Florence, and I looked at this incredible painting, it was so violent, this man being beheaded by this woman. And I went up to it and I looked at the label, and I realised it was a woman who painted it, Artemisia Gentileschi.
Now, she's got quite a story, by the way. But I didn't know anything about her, but, you know, that little seed was dropped. If this woman, from 400 years ago, she's now in the Uffizi Museum, and she was a great master. Out of respect to her, actually, I just thought, well maybe Lindy you should just give it a go.
STYNES: I love that electrifying moment when you saw that huge artwork and realised it was painted by a woman.
LEE: Yeah, and the story of Artemisia, she was a great master, she was accepted, but she was also raped repeatedly by this, um, client. And she was put to trial, and she was tortured to make sure she was telling the truth. I mean, that's, you know, so I gathered courage from her story. I was just like, well, I can only try.
STYNES (Voiceover): So Lindy decided to head to art school in London.
LEE: I spent a couple of years in London going to art school, but you know, I ran out of money, as you do.
So I had to return to Australia, but that was actually ultimately really, really important, because Australia was where I was born, but also to face the greatest difficulties, all of the issues inside of me.
STYNES: So you came back from London to sort of confront this part of yourself. Um,
LEE: It wasn't that I deliberately, was gonna confront it. It's just that because it coincided also with some breakthroughs in my work.
It was the time of, of post modernism and which meant, for me it was like every single time I put a mark on the canvas, oh, it reminded me of somebody else, you know?
So I was classified as a postmodernist because of the way I would appropriate the great masters in my early work through photocopy and everything. But there's a huge difference between me and that irony of postmodernity.
I wasn't trying to be clever. I wasn't trying to be, to make fun or mimic. I was trying to learn what was important to me. And I was actually trying on these paintings, a bit like clothing, what fit and what didn't fit. And then because I was copying the thought came, that the copy is really the perfect metaphor for me. Because I feel not good enough to be a white Australian. I'm never going to be a white Australian. And I certainly didn't feel good enough to call myself thoroughly Chinese either. So I just felt this, this relationship with this copying is because I didn't know how I could fit in. So I felt a bad copy. And that was the big opening for me.
STYNES: Wow. Did the imposter syndrome ever go away, Lindy?
LEE: Yeah, about 10 minutes ago.
STYNES: Yeah, finally!
(Music)
STYNES (Voiceover): In the time that I’ve spent with Lindy Lee, I get a sense that her charisma, her openness, and most of all, her art, gives something to others that is very un-cynical.
Through her artwork people get to transcend their pettiness, their day-to-day, the mundane, and really connect with Big Soul Questions. It’s not agony. It’s a very pure experience of awe.
I asked her whether the feeling of being an outsider continued to shape her work.
LEE: It did shape my work for at least half of my career. I was always trying to find that sense of belonging. And, if I look at the beginning of the journey, which is completely about identity, completely about not belonging, and the pain of that. And now, of course the work is about cosmos. And cosmos is the entirety of everything, past, present, and future. And my attitude now is that there is no way to fall out of belonging, because belonging to this cosmos, to this great vastness, is our birthright.
And it is not about fitting in. That is the most brilliant insight that I've ever had in my life. Belonging is not about fitting in. Because fitting in, you're always trying to suppress something of what you are in order to inform and make sure the other person is feeling comfortable.
But belonging is actually the practice of stepping up and being thoroughly who and what you are. And that is a constant practice. And if you grow that within you. Then the chances are you will have the grace to allow that other to be thoroughly them too, themselves. So that's the trajectory of the 70 years.
So when I said, when did I lose imposter syndrome was literally, around this time that I've come to realise, I, we have belonged this whole time.
STYNES (Voiceover): Like the other guests in this season of SEEN - Lindy has qualities that make people want to follow her. Teams of people work around the clock to bring her art to life. People travel the world to see her sculptures. When she speaks, people listen. Lindy Lee trades in the profound.
And the thing about Leaders is - the good ones care.
LEE: Who I care about most deeply, are young Asian women who are struggling. Because that is obviously where I come from. And so I have a passion and duty of care. I feel deeply about that.
STYNES: Does that inform your men, mentoring?
LEE: Good. This is good. So, we're talking about being seen. So when I'm mentoring people or when I was teaching, I used to say, I'm going to be the laziest supervisor or lecturer you've ever come across. And that simply means that, especially with PhD students, it's like, I am never going to read everything that you've read.
But if you come with a sincere heart, we shall have the best time unpacking what you care about. This is just asking that gentle question to see how that can open this person's life a little. It's their work to do, I'm just walking with them. And I actually love that.
STYNES: So you are being seen by the people you are mentoring, who really crave, I'm guessing, to be seen by you.
LEE: Yeah, but not just by me, they need to see, through the vehicle of somebody else, what is there. They are maybe too afraid to see, they're not ready to see, that you need that kind of coming up against something sometimes to make something visible.
These conversations are about making them visible to themselves. They just happen to put it on me. I'm just the, the trigger helping to create an opportunity for them to see themselves,
STYNES: Hmm. You're leveraging your curiosity.
LEE: Yeah, it's, it's all about that. So, but genuine, heartfelt, warm curiosity.
(Music)
STYNES (Voiceover): Last year - having just turned 70 - Lindy launched her latest - and largest - work of art at the National Gallery of Australia. At $14 million dollars it was famously known as the Most Expensive Public Artwork ever commissioned.
‘Ouroboros’ is a huge interactive sculpture sitting outside the NGA in Canberra. Its shape is based on the ancient image of a snake eating its own tail - seen by many as the symbol of eternal return, of cycles of birth, death and renewal.
The scale of the work reflects Lindy's ambition.
LEE: I have spent decades gathering together the, the toolkit, the language, cultivating this curiosity towards a deeper understanding of something I needed to know. That's still occurring, by the way. That will always be there.
But now, I think that the, the childhood traumas and all those, they're, they're there, of course, but they're largely healed. And so now I don't have to work through those difficulties. They're not there anymore. And so now I've got all of this language and all of this experience and all of these tools that I can just play with. That's all I can describe. I can just play with. So, and that's why, you know, immediately the Ouroboros was open. I'm actually back in my hotel room drawing away because, because it's so much fun, you know.
STYNES: The picture I'm getting of you Lindy, is somebody always on the move. I know you're about to go to China and Japan, so you're literally moving, but also the horizon of your life keeps having new tasks, new big projects, a new thing to achieve, a new artistic puzzle to solve.
Will you ever run out of that kind of purpose that keeps propelling you?
LEE: Apparently not. I don't… because…
STYNES: Like, is that how we forecast, like, what happens if we do, is it possible?
LEE: Is it possible that I won't continue working? Is that what you're saying?
STYNES: No that you’ll run out of purpose, at some point you’ll say actually I’ve had enough.
LEE: Oh, no, no. Well, I don't know. Maybe I will. Uh, I, I don't, I sometimes toy with the idea of what if the Ouroboros is the last thing I ever do. I'd be quite happy, you know. But the thing is, is that you're also talking to a person. So, massive week last week. Absolutely exhausted. So what does Lindy do over the weekend? Start a new project. Start drawing. Cause the energy of the sculpture, the Ouroboros, is so strong now in me because she's open and she's on display. And, so I just had to capture something of that and push it towards the next biggest thing I want to do.
STYNES: The next thing.
LEE: Yeah, so, so long, you know, you mentioned curiosity. As long as there's curiosity and as long as there's a sense of not just needing to connect, but wanting others to connect as well, not just, not the aggrandisement stuff. But just my really firm belief is that connection is what gives us joy.
And as long as all of, you know, the curiosity is there, then the drive and the work will also be there.
(Music)
STYNES: Lindy, what is the secret sauce of aging well?
LEE: Oh, I just think this joy and curiosity, because you know, like I've talked a lot about how bad I felt during my early twenties… you know like, when you have joy, damn well feel every skerrick of it because it won't last. So that's the practice. You know, I just met my, my goddaughter, Mariam, who's six weeks old now. Oh, such joy. You know, why would I want to pass over that too quickly, if you know what I mean? This is the first time I ever met her. Never going to happen again. And she was adorable.
So, you know, like these moments are really important because they shore up the connection and the openness. That's the secret to aging - just being open and curious.
STYNES (Voiceover): Lindy Lee, my friends. I love her so much!
What I’m getting from Lindy is that one of the ways to age well is to never stop moving, never stop learning, and never ever stop being curious.
This has been SEEN, hosted by me, Yumi Stynes, and produced by Audiocraft in collaboration with SBS.
From Audiocraft, Season 3 of SEEN was produced by Laura Brierley Newton and Olivia O'Flynn.
Sound design and mix is done by Ravi Gupta and Executive Producer is Lorna Clarkson and Kate Montague.
The SBS team are Joel Supple and Max Gosford with special thanks to Caroline Gates.
Our podcast artwork is created by Evi-O Studios.
And music is by Yeo.
SEEN’s original concept was by Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn.
