to feel small
West Gallery
19 February — 31 March 2026Often in rock climbing trips and in the hikes to and from crags, Nicole Tee is pummeled by wave after wave of incessant thoughts. This flurry takes on a more focused edge when she is climbing sheer rock. The intense concentration required to hike and climb is often all-consuming, and Tee shares that it's only when she turns to see the view that she finds herself pulled back, surprised by and brought into a heightened appreciation of the world before her. As such, in these excursions, to look at a view is to see something beyond one's body. It is to gather into perception a much larger structure, or to reckon with a vast, encompassing space into which one is subsumed. In other words, it is to be physically reminded, albeit briefly, of one's own diminution. And from this flash of recognition, to fall into a deep and abiding sense of awe.
The magnitude of this emotion is the vital force behind Tee's latest exhibition, to feel small. Such emotions recall the 18th century notion of the sublime, an aesthetic response to nature that extends the sensory perception of beauty towards infinitude. Nature is central to this pervading emotion. For when the human is confronted by the scale of the world, it falls into hushed reverence. Similarly, in such moments, Tee returns and falls back into her faith. The journey to the crag becomes akin to her own spiritual journey, finding pockets of quiet connection to a larger purpose amidst the distractions and noise of life.
In her artmaking, this sublimity in nature is translated towards representation, with the art object becoming a vehicle for eliciting the same emotions. Tee's use of thread animates the scenes further, mimicking foliage and expanding the visual modality of the image with its tactility. The objects recall the grandeur of nature, the vastness of sky and the imposing character of rock seen first-hand. Its affective imprint becomes materialized, transmuted in form. But while Tee takes images from actual locations, her titles intimate into more ambiguous moments, of views glimpsed midway through a specified route. Each panorama serves as geographical markers in the journey, that are nonetheless hard to pinpoint temporally. Every image a punctuated stillness, a brief lull, amidst the taxing motions of a body moving along the earth.
to feel small gestures towards immensity. For Tee, it is a reminder to not be completely consumed by the minutiae of everyday life, and instead, to recall the grace and power of the infinite.
— JC Rosette
photos courtesy of West Gallery