A conversation with Maia Ruth Lee and Guadalupe Rosales about making reparative and discursive space for others and the importance (and tensions) of cultural representation.

Maia Ruth Lee
Maia Ruth Lee is a New York based artist and educator born in Busan, South Korea. Lee’s first solo exhibition in New York was at Eli Ping Frances Perkins in 2016, followed by her solo exhibition at Jack Hanley Gallery two years later. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions including at CANADA gallery (New York), Salon 94 (New York), Roberts & Tilton Gallery (Los Angeles), and Parisian Laundry Gallery (Montreal). Lee participated in the Whitney Biennial 2019 and was the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Grant in 2017. Lee is the director of the nonprofit after school art program Wide Rainbow.

Guadalupe Rosales
Guadalupe Rosales is an artist based in Los Angeles. Rosales has also been building an archive of photographs and ephemera connected to Latino culture in Southern California. Rosales’ projects exist as both archives of physical objects and crowd sourced digital archives, assembled on her widely-followed Instagram accounts @Veteranas_and_Rucas and @Map_Pointz. Guided by self-representation to create counter narratives, she tells the stories of communities often under or misrepresented in official archives and public memory. With a participatory approach to her practice, she aims to celebrate the voices of others through their archives and memories. She holds an MFA from The School of The Art Institute Of Chicago. She has exhibited at The Gordon Parks Foundation (Pleasantville, NY), The Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles), The Kitchen (New York), and The Philbrook Museum (Tulsa, OK). Rosales has lectured at various institutions such as UCLA, Yale University, Columbia University, The Getty, The New Museum, MOCA, and The Graduate Center in New York.