Lee Mingwei’s The Travelers

Lee Mingwei's The Travelers launched September 22, 2010 and will be on display at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City in November 2011.

On the day of the Chinese Moon Festival, September 22, 2010, MOCA launched Lee Mingwei’s artist project, The Travelers. Lee custom-made 100 blank notebooks for the project. Released into the world from MOCA, the books will travel around the world for one year. The books are passed from person to person like a chain letter, with each participant adding a personal story about “leaving home” at some point in their lives. Did they have a call to adventure? Did they leave willingly? Did they overcome setbacks? Did they ever return home? Each book becomes a “Traveler” in the project, who leaves the MOCA “home village” to embark on a long journey.

The project was commissioned by MOCA to launch on the first anniversary of its new home at 215 Centre Street, designed by Maya Lin. Inspired by the museum’s mission to document the epic journey of Chinese to America, and the ongoing journeys we make as Americans, the project was envisioned to actively engage the public in the spirit of MOCA’s approach over the past 30 years as a “dialogic museum”.

Participants are asked to send the books back to MOCA by the next Moon Festival, on September 12, 2011. The books that make it back to the museum, each transformed by their individual journeys, will be displayed in an evocative installation by Lee Mingwei, with all the accumulated stories accessible for visitors to read. How many Travelers return home? What kinds of stories will they be filled with on their return?

A companion website to the project (http://traveler.mocanyc.org) tracks all the books as they travel around the world. Project participants are asked to upload the current geographical location of the books, and 5 images that illustrate the story they’ve written in the book.

About the Artist
For the past ten years Lee Mingwei has worked as a conceptual artist, creating installations that depend on the exchange of intimate experiences between artist and viewer. He has continually focused on themes of trust and self-awareness in projects that create a potential for active exchange. Lee creates projects that test the limits of when and where such transformative experiences may take place, and has sensitively framed aspects of everyday life into experiences of potential discovery and renewal.

Lee was born in Taiwan, and currently lives and works in New York City and Berkeley, California. His work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally, including the Arthur M. Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Fabric Workshop & Museum (Philadelphia), Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Albion Gallery (London), Biennale de Lyon, and Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial, among others. For more information on the artist, please visit: http://www.leemingwei.com.

The Travelers is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. The project is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties. It is also supported by the generosity of museum members.