Tidawhitney Lek

Tidawhitney Lek (b. 1992, Long Beach, CA) is a Cambodian-American painter from Long Beach, California. Her work plays with narrative and the Asian experiences of first-generation Americans born to immigrant parents. These bright and somber paintings present nuances of domesticity, figures and hands interacting in composition as culture and Southeast-Asian elements echo through depictions of mundane household objects. Lek reinvents traditional and conventional mediums like pastel, acrylic and oil paints on canvas, interchanging textures as pictorial spaces recede and soften. In her dense compositions, it is often unclear where interiors and exteriors begin or end, as family members, architecture, and objects crowd the picture plane resulting in evocative and dream-like scenarios.

Lek graduated with her BFA in Painting and Drawing from Cal State University of Long Beach, Long Beach, CA. She also studied at the Tianjin Academy of Arts, Tianjin, China. Lek’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York; Sow & Tailor, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, K11 Musea, and Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, UK among others. Most recently, her work was featured in the 2023 Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum, curated by Diana Wawi and Pablo José Ramírez. Lek’s work has been acquired by several public institutions including Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (ICA Miami), Miami, FL; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL; and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA. Lek lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.