< a.k.a. Nikki S. Lee > is a semi-fictional, documentary-style film that depicts the real life and work of the artist Nikki S. LEE. Filmed during the course of one year, LEE appears as two distinct invented personas: a reserved, serious intellectual, working out of a Brooklyn loft (“Nikki A”) and a fun-loving, glamorous world traveler who loves to socialize with collectors and thinks nothing of hopping on a plane to go shopping in Venice (“Nikki B”) The ...more

< a.k.a. Nikki S. Lee > is a semi-fictional, documentary-style film that depicts the real life and work of the artist Nikki S. LEE. Filmed during the course of one year, LEE appears as two distinct invented personas: a reserved, serious intellectual, working out of a Brooklyn loft (“Nikki A”) and a fun-loving, glamorous world traveler who loves to socialize with collectors and thinks nothing of hopping on a plane to go shopping in Venice (“Nikki B”) The action begins in an off camera interview with Nikki A, during which she acknowledges that while a documentary is being made about her, she, herself will also be making a documentary about the artist Nikki S. LEE. The activities of both Nikkis are seamlessly interwoven as the actual events of Nikki S. LEE’s life unfold. In the summer of 2005, Nikki B travels to Venice where she is the guest of American art collectors. She attends the Venice Biennial and an elegant brunch on the roof of the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, on her way to Frankfurt for the opening of her first solo exhibition in Germany. But it is Nikki A who arrives at the gallery to find that her works have been butchered by the mounter and that even the hairdryer in her hotel room doesn’t work. Nikki B arrives in Paris, at the invitation of ‘The New York Times’, to attend the Haute Couture shows where she selects her clothing for a series of photographs that she shoots at the Hotel Ritz. In the meantime, Nikki A goes to various photo labs in New York, working and thinking about art all the time. Nikki B visits the home of collectors who have offered to lend her an elaborate wedding dress that she wears later in the film, while staging a fake Jewish wedding for a series of photographs. Nikki A reads books in her studio. Nikki B travels to Mexico City for an opening where she meets more collectors and charms the elderly men who ask her to dance in the public square. Back at her studio, Nikki A meets with her dealer and discusses traditional Korean performance with RoseLee Goldberg, the internationally known expert on performance art. In other scenes, she attends the Pusan Film Festival, has a brief acting job in Seoul, goes to glamorous art world parties, visits another collector, lectures on her work, and performs in a music video. Toward the conclusion of the film, she walks in real time, down the long aisle of The Armory Show, the annual contemporary art fair held in New York, to her dealer’s booth where she drops off an envelope and then turns around and walks back out, never once stopping to look at any of the art that surrounds her. The film ends with Nikki A saying “I think New York is the only place I can be Nikki.” less