B.B.Clement 1-16, 2026 by Maia Ruth Lee

Generously donated by: François Ghebaly Gallery and Tina Kim Gallery

Acrylic ink on canvas
Unframed: 26 × 30 inches (66 × 76.2 cm)
Framed: 27 × 31 × 2 inches (68.6 × 78.7 × 5.1 cm)

Born as a bound bundle, unleashed as a painting. Lee wraps canvas, linen, and cast-off clothing into tight, luggage-like sculptures, echoing the bound bags she watched migrant workers cinch shut at the Kathmandu airport as a child. She soaks the bundle in ink, lets it sit, then cuts the cords and unfurls the canvas. What's revealed is rope-scarred and map-like, abstract terrain carrying the memory of everything it was bound against. The work speaks to migration, displacement, and the tension between constraint and release that runs through Lee's practice. Part of her celebrated Bondage Baggage series, currently on view with Tina Kim Gallery.