Lee Paje | eatsleepdreamwork

In a quiet, yet expansive gesture, Lee Paje reflects on a concept so vital to the creative process that it is often overlooked for its perceived monotony. The notion of witnessing a day in the life of another person might suggest a humdrum slackening into the autobiographical, but in essence it is the core of creation, and here it is bestowed with distinction, as well as the credence and attention it deserves. In this context, Paje foregrounds the quotidian not as an incidental backdrop, but as a critical and generative space, charging it with the theoretical and aesthetic weight it warrants.

By bringing attention to this routine aspect of creativity, Paje reframes the ordinary as a vital and meaningful space of reflection and production. It constitutes the fundamental site of creative labor. And through her multidisciplinary approach to image-making, these reflections come in the form of video, paintings, objects, sculpture, and drawings.

As a preoccupation that dates back from 2009, her attempts achieve an encompassing and overarching outcome. It presents a state of unfolding narratives; of fluidity, and of overlapping routines. In a video called, “Sit In My Retina,” the viewer assumes the artist’s POV in fragmented shots throughout a particular day. Filled with the banality of mundane episodes, it is as prosaic as it is shockingly intimate. Paired with the recent iteration shot in 2025, it has become a comparative testament to the evolving self and its relation to time. The same indexing of past and present applies to another video work called, “401 Is.” In composing the fragmented shots as a video mosaic, Paje constructs a kind of cumulative, digital self-portrait that is dependent on the sequence of events.

While the videos explore time through dynamic, unfolding narratives, the objects in the room act as static markers, preserving the repercussions or memories of past experiences. For example, the framed palettes, filled with dried oil paint, stand as silent witnesses to the routine of daily life—-eat, sleep, dream, and work. Each one represents a captured moment in the process of creation. The framed drawings of waves and hand sculpture, meanwhile, mark the residue of many years of artistic labor, signifying the cyclic nature of creation and re-discovery, of coming back and going forth.

In Lee Paje’s own words, she reflects:

“How do we shape the things we make, and how do those things, in turn, shape us? Creation becomes a tool for self-definition, and the act of making is both a process of identity-building and myth-making.”

In continuing to challenge and reinterpret personal, cultural, and historical narratives, Paje, throughout her practice, has dealt with both the formation and performance of an identity. Asmanifested in her many paintings, sculptures, and installations, she has become an archivist of imaginations and re-constructions. In going back to the actuality of the everyday—to the unadorned, laborious, and sometimes mundane life of an artist, she tackles head on the identity of the mythmaker herself—as the artist embroiled in the myth-making process, and as the artist who constructs and performs her own myth, her own gender, and identity.

In looking at the paintings that comprise the rest of the show, we can see the artist’s studio—her desk, the kitchen sink, as composed of objects, tools, and other related materials. In one of the paintings called, “End of Day Assemblage,” we see a vague reflection on the panel behind a running faucet—a subtle indication of the artist’s presence. This partial concealment of identity may be an indication of incompleteness, of a work still in progress. And as both celebration and ode, eatsleepdreamwork is that attestation, appearing as a document to the passage of time, as seen through the typical day of an individual—-who holds an ongoing commitment to her evolving artistic process.

/CLJ

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