NOTE Play music first and then play video art at your own pace.
Chaconne for solo violin
Mari Lee, violin
Sara C. Sun, video art
Chaconne, Italian Ciaccona, a solo instrumental piece that forms the fifth and final movement of the Partita No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004, by Johann Sebastian Bach.
NOTE Play music first and then play video art at your own pace.
The music captured my imagination immediately, deluged my mind with deep red watery imagery of immense depth.
In my collaborations with musicians, the sensibility often follows a non-narrative and nonsequential order. In other words, the imagery does not need to accord with the music nor the music to sync with the imagery. In my video editing process, I am interested in such effects without the exceptions of disconnection, disharmony, and disjunction. I hope the works I make would resonate with human emotions, especially in this complicated time where darkness and uncertainty are so unavoidably part of our daily living.
Mari Lee is an artist dedicated to engaging her audience by instilling curiosity for music. A violinist and entrepreneur, she aims to bridge the gap between audiences, performers, and composers.
Mari has performed internationally at the South Bank Centre, Wigmore Hall, Le Festival de Radio France Montpellier, Philharmonie de Paris, and Carnegie Hall. Praised as “extremely impressive” by the Strad Magazine, she has been invited to renowned festivals including Ravinia, Verbier, and Marlboro.
Exemplifying her strong interest in interdisciplinary art, Mari co-founded Salon Séance, an organization that presents concerts with incidental theatre. A collaboration of musicians, actors, researchers, playwrights, and stage directors, Salon Séance has won multiple awards including Tarisio’s Young Artists Grants and the Britten-Pears Foundation’s Britten Award.
Mari’s commitment to audience engagement has taken her beyond traditional concert venues and communities. During her fellowship at Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, she created interactive performances for the incarcerated, homeless, developmentally disabled populations, and Title-1 schools in New York.
Mari’s highlights from past seasons include performances with Salon Séance at The Crypt Sessions and Yellow Barn; a collaboration with dancers from BodyVox; multimedia concerts at CreArt; and performances of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire with lighting and theater at Carnegie Hall. Mari plays on 1863 Jean-Baptiste Villaume.
I have been making art in NYC for more than three decades. My work crosses video, installation, drawing, and digital images. Like tree branches stemming from the multifaceted mind where concept, ideas, and reflection lay the foundation of my creative process. Contradictions and the fragile and unpredictable nature of our daily existence are often my work's conceptual framework.
The inexplicable truth and wisdom revealed through the process of artmaking incessantly astonish and expand my creative mind. My artworks have been included in exhibitions nationally and internationally since the early '90s. I was the 2003 Honorary Fellowship recipient at Djerassi Artist Residency and 2001 Awarded Artist Resident at McColl (Tryon) Center for Visual Art.
In New York, one-person shows are The Governors Island Art Fair in 2012, Sarah Lawrence College and Brooklyn's Open Source Gallery in 2009, Gallery 456 in 2002, and a two-person exhibition at Momenta Art in 2000.