TIDAWHITNEY LEK, EMIL SANDS, KHALIF TAHIR THOMPSON

The Stories We Tell offers a vivid exploration of memory, identity and family through the distinctive lenses of Tidawhitney Lek, Emil Sands, and Khalif Tahir Thompson. Each artist blends autobiographical elements with imagined and historical narratives, uniting their individual stories through a focus on the human figure. Tidawhitney Lek, a Cambodian-American artist based in Southern California, draws inspiration from her experience growing up as a first-generation American born to immigrant parents. Lek’s paintings are acts of remembering, documenting scenes of everyday life within a large Asian family. She paints with a sharp eye for detail, conjuring images that explore issues of home and belonging. Emil Sands, a London-born painter and writer currently living in New York, captures the physical idiosyncrasies of the human body in his large-scale canvases. His semi-nude figures, often viewed from behind, roam in expansive landscapes and open beach settings. In his tender portrayal of flesh, Sands explores the complex relationship between viewer and subject – between seeing and being seen. Khalif Tahir Thompson, born and based in Brooklyn, invites viewers into the everyday lives of his sitters through large, vibrant canvases. Describing his work as portraiture, many of Thompson’s paintings are inspired by family photograph albums. Thompson constructs compositions using this familial cast of characters, layering contemporary and cultural references that encourage us to consider notions of race, home, belonging and – crucially – how identity is shared

The exhibition is accompanied by three new texts by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, Christopher Riopelle, and Debbie Meniru.

In memorializing the mundane, Lek offers visual gestures of recognition to her family and community elders. This is not your motherland, but it is mine. And I will translate this place for you; I will make it ours.’ – Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, the Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and CoDirector of the Asian American Art Initiative at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, CA

‘Time is rendered inconsequential here, sequence inadequate, in favour of a far richer engagement with a specific persona. As Sands, like Seurat, knows, our relationships especially with those closest to us evolve, mutate, flow.’ – Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich Curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, London

‘Although rooted in the past, his paintings constantly pull us back to the present moment. It is this push and pull that creates the nostalgia which permeates much of Thompson’s work.’ – Debbie Meniru, an independent writer, editor and curator and previously the Assistant Curator of Research & Interpretation at Tate, London