What do I do? I think I am a magician. [laughs]

Other people might say I'm an artist.

For the past 25 years, I've done major shows in major institutions around the world.

For me to bring my work back to the Bay Area, to the people who supported me, it means a lot to me.

Lee Mingwei is an extraordinary artist who has shaped a practice about the relationships between people. He’s activated the space inside the museum to make connections that would not normally have been made otherwise.

It felt like an ideal and opportune moment to bring his practice into the museum, so that we can talk to our visitors about how art can play a vital role in healing the social fabric after a period of time where it was deeply broken. He has a deep connection to the Bay Area. It's a little bit of a homecoming for him. 

My relationship with the Bay Area really has to do with the beginning of being an artist. It's a place I always come back to, a place I gain and regain my energy and inspiration. 

I was born in Taiwan in a little town called Taichung, which is the middle part of the island. Taiwan was at that time a dictatorial state. I was a very, very naughty and rambunctious kid. I was kind of the black sheep and the troublemaker at home, to a point that my parents were quite worried that I am going to get into trouble. Mainly because I was very vocal about my ideas and thoughts. In a dictatorial society, that is not allowed. In elementary school, I loved making art. I never followed instruction. I always made these really, I would say, abstract, crazy things that my teacher didn't like. And one of the teachers even smashed it and said, “Where did you get these ideas to make these things?”

Once I came out to the US, I loved it. I just felt there is such a freedom, and I could be myself.

What I really do is I receive these ideas, images, sounds, smells, sometimes.

Ahh, mushrooms. 

And these elements become a project.

The way we picked the diners were through lottery. So I'll pick the person and then call them up. So when I cook a meal for someone, I try to put attention and aesthetic into it. 

The first time I learned about him was truly at his first gallery exhibition in New York, where he presented The Dining Project. There are many artists that set up scenarios that visitors are invited to engage with in one form of another. 

I do remember, even at the time, thinking that it was quite unique in the intimacy that it created between the artist and the visitor. That was the starting point of his career. That was the first time that people took note.

One of my biggest regrets is always losing out in the lottery to participate in your Dining Project. I tried twice, and I never made the cut. 

But here we are. 

Here we are. Have you been here before? 

No. And I'm so excited because since we started working on this project, you have wanted to bring me here.

The Cheese Board here?

It's a place I usually would come after classes at CCAC. And then there's a bookstore over there, which I usually hang out. And then I walk to the Monterey Market. 

I still do this every time when I'm back in the Bay Area. 

Well, ritual, I would say, plays a very important role also in your work, which is one of the reasons also why we chose the title for the show, which is called Rituals of Care. 

Yes, I believe that we all have rituals. One is a ritual that I learned from going to school or going to a spiritual place. 

However, with my work, it's more about ritual that you created for yourself. What is it to be a human being?

What is it to be ourself? How do we make poetic sense when we encounter these works? 

The crux of Mingwei's practice is about meaning and people. How can we make the simplest of gestures most profound? I first met Lee Mingwei in 1997 at the Queensland Art Gallery. He was a gentle, kind, open person, an artist whose ego was not the first thing you encountered, but ideas. We made a version of The Letter Writing Project. 

The Letter Writing Project is one of my very early participatory works, inspired by the passing of my maternal grandmother. 

I had so many things I wanted to tell her while she was alive, but she's no longer there. So I wrote a lot of letters for her. At the end, I burned those letters. Therefore, I thought, if I have something like that, maybe other people will have an experience that they would like to do.  

By encouraging people to write a letter, The Letter Writing Project has amplified how these spaces have become very important for people to think about our experiences of our time and our place. 

In 2001, September 11, around 9 o’clock, my dad called me. He said an airplane just hit the World Trade building and looks like it's going to fall. My husband, John, was an employee in that building. So I was just sitting there for the longest time, and I didn't know what to do. What I did though, was I took out all these things that I didn't have time to repair, like socks and sweaters with a hole and started repairing.

That's when I heard the key go into the lock and turn. And when the door opened, John was standing there covered in ash. It took me nine years to be able to have the courage to create something called The Mending Project, which is not about the horrific event. It's more about how do we move on? Through support, through friendship, through repair, through gift giving.

We all live with our wounds, but hopefully we will find a way to mend them that still points to its presence, but embellishes it. All his work is inspired by either personal events or world events that imply a form of loss. But then he metabolizes these experiences into situations that emphasize social connectivity and a mode of healing. 

He sees the role of art as bringing people together in these difficult times. His work opens you up to thinking about what difference means and how you establish yourself within the other. All of Mingwei’s work is really grounded in that desire to connect, whether that's with a stranger, whether that's with a lost family member, or whether that's with the person that you happened to encounter on your way into a gallery.

Hopefully when people come to experience my work, they see something they could identify. Doesn't really matter where they came from. They can identify these elements because they are human beings. 

Thank you. Thank you. See you soon.