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Ril Lee

@lee.ril

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Created this cover a while ago for Crossing Worlds, Claiming Belonging: Asian Diasporas, Migration, and Justice in the Americas, edited by Rose Ann Torres and @alisonywlam , but never got around to sharing it here.

I called the piece Asia on the Margin—also an earlier name for the book. When I made it, I was thinking about intimacy in Lisa Lowe’s sense of the term in The Intimacies of Four Continents: not intimacy simply as closeness or affection, but as the often obscured relations that bind distant places, peoples, histories, and lives together through migration, colonialism, labour, empire, and capital. The waves and lotuses were my way of thinking about Asia and the Americas not as separate worlds that migrants simply “cross” between, but as worlds already intimately entangled—unevenly, historically, and sometimes violently.

With the political language around immigrants becoming harsher and more dehumanizing, I’ve been returning to this image a lot lately. I keep thinking, with Ashon Crawley’s Blackpentecostal Breath in mind, about inhale and exhale as practices of possibility: how we breathe within conditions that constrain us, and how breath might still make room for movement, relation, and otherwise ways of being.

#DigitalArtist #ConceptualArt #QueerArt #AsianDiasporaArt #DiasporaArt #MigrationArt #DecolonialArt #ArtAndIdentity #ArtAndPolitics #ContemporaryIllustration #BookCoverArt by @lee.ril

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2 months ago

OUT NOW …go to your favourite streaming platform and have a listen, if you enjoy, give us a follow on your music platform. #newsong #hardrock #vancouver #realmusic #peace artwork by @lee.ril taken in Vancouver, B.C., Canada by @lee.ril

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3 months ago

Lately I’ve been obsessed with the idea of translucence I discovered in Shana Leodar Ye’s Queer Chimerica. In the story, characters literally lose their color and turn see-through. This prompted me to think about how queer bodies can become both hyper-visible and almost invisible at the same time, as well as how queer folks navigate identity, memory, and the lines between what we choose to reveal or conceal about ourselves.

That concept of translucence inspired me to experiment with drawing translucent fruits (though some may think of the tomato-blue-berry-wannabe as non-fruit): delicate shapes—at times even jello-ish—that look like they could slip right through your fingers, yet are undeniably present. These pieces feel like glimpses of something essential—caught between strategic and induced "vulnerability", and how layers of visibility (or invisibility) can be embodied…now I’m just rambling 😂

#DigitalArtist #DigitalIllustration #ConceptualArt #QueerArt #QueerArtist #QueerVisualArt #ContemporaryIllustration #SurrealIllustration #TranslucentArt #StillLifeArt #FruitArt #VisualStorytelling by @lee.ril

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2 years ago

“Bullseye” 🎯 (working title)

Inspired by the brilliant worlds of @blvdbizz + @ckavidy 🫡 thank you for making work that makes me want to make things. 🖤

And to @abstractproductionshouse @musicisabstract @miabstract : the best creative spaces don’t just hold creation, they compel it. taken in Abstract Learning by @lee.ril

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8 days ago

Botanically suggestive. by @lee.ril

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8 days ago

…spread that 🐱 wide let me go for a dive 🤪🫪👀. Showcase @theshiftbymeg recap 🥹🤍 so grateful 🤍
@ginsigobispo was literally the one who tutored me for this choreo, getting to dance next to her felt like a full circle moment 🙂‍↕️.

DC @megcartwrightt 🤍🥹 we love you so so much by @lee.ril

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9 days ago

“Girl, I’ll be your best…then I’ll be your best again” 🎶💃🏼
Super cool choreo by @ninali16 @the.core.to 🤍

First time volunteering to do a solo! Wow the nerves really got to me🥹. But at the end of the day it’s less scary than I thought it’d be 🤍. by @lee.ril

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12 days ago

I love ME naked. 🤍

First contemporary combo in 16 years🥹. Thank you @stefanieeby @inviteonlyxo for bringing us together and sharing with us the Bloom archetype🤍 and this wonderful piece.

Should I do more contemporary…

🎶”Naked” by @ellamai by @lee.ril

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13 days ago

Whistle while you twurk 👌👌👌
Fun choreo by @jonna_abrams @winengrind

#WeNeedAProgram 🥹🥹 by @lee.ril

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16 days ago

“i’m inviting you to say less… say it with your body babe”
@sf1music speaks my mind 🫶🤍.

#Sayless #SF1 #HeelsDance #DanceReels #freestyle by @lee.ril

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20 days ago

IG fam meet my children 🤍 by @lee.ril

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21 days ago

@angeedelacruz is putting our balance to a test!!!!!
Also tried to work on texture for this one. So much fun 🥹🤍🫶. by @lee.ril

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22 days ago