When one thinks of the Tree of Life, several images may come to mind because of its deep roots in different cultures and religions. The first and last books of the Bible mention it together with the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, while the Bodhi Tree in Buddhism was where Siddhartha Gautama […]
Lee Paje Demythisizes the Artistic Process in ‘eatsleepdreamwork’
eatsleepdreamwork is the dissection of artist Lee Paje of how we perceive the act of artistry. The exhibit, which ran at MO_Space in BGC High Street, faces the general ordinariness of actually creating art, moving against grand myths of what artistry means.
The artistic process tends to be mythologized in one sense or another when creators talk of their work. Many people, when thinking of art, see it as a sudden burst of inspiration, something that overcomes the body, mind, and soul of the person to turn them into conduits of visions. Thus, many of our popular artist narratives include drugs, mental illness, or improvisation.
What Lee Paje emphasized in eatsleepdreamwork, however, is that making art is work. That beyond inspiration, it takes actual skill and grind to craft these visions to life. And so, her exhibition centered around that grind, the need to put in the work for these grand ideas we may have.
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Much of the exhibit centered around the question that the artist herself asked about the art that she created: “How do we shape the things we create, and in turn, how do those things shape us? Creating, or making, in a sense that is not only tied to tangible material things, but also to how we make our lives.”
The Time of Making Art
One of the main centerpieces of the exhibition is “Sit In My Retina,” an immersive day-in-a-life video diary shown from Paje’s perspective. There, it shows the artist as they go about their day: eating breakfast, taking a bath, commuting to their studio, making art, preparing for bed, and even reading articles on their phone. It is fragmented, showing us only snippets of their day, even as the audience slowly understands their daily routine from the artist’s point-of-view.
Another work, “401 Is,” provides a fragmented self-portrait of the artist in the form of tiny video mosaics coming together into one. It mixes different videos to craft a dynamic and honest self-reflection of who that artist is—and more importantly, how our self-perceptions tend to shift within ourselves.
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Both works were first made by Lee Paje as a part of her thesis in 2009, with “Sit In My Retina” receiving new footage made in 2025 as “a comparative testament to the evolving self and its relation to time,” according to the exhibit write-up. Both of them explore time as it relates to how we form our self-perception; the efforts that it takes not just to create, but to exist.
“I noticed that a year is no longer divided into days, weeks, and months,” she said. “It has become more about the projects, the work that needs to be finished, and the deadlines to meet. Everything revolves around making. The passing of time is marked by moments of making, which are then intertwined with the banality of everyday routines. I noticed how the cyclical nature of time and routines coincides with making.”
Being Present in One’s Life
The other works augment the central thesis of the exhibit; two paintings, for example, showcase Paje’s perspective of her workspace and at the sink washing paintbrushes. It works with the intimacy of the other works and merges into ideas of self-reflection: what does the way we create art mean for the artist itself?
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“By bringing attention to this routine aspect of creativity, Paje reframes the ordinary as a vital and meaningful space of reflection,” the exhibit write-up said. “It constitutes the fundamental site of creative labor.”
Paje herself said that the focus on routine also reminds her fellow artists that their experiences outside their craft form an important part of what they make as a whole. The focus on spaces, on time spent, on it being work, reminds us that there is more to life than art; the demands of living are there to keep us grounded and human.
“Without an everyday routine, I imagine I might get lost in my work, forgetting other important things—like being present with myself, my family, and other significant people in my life. I might neglect the demands of everyday life outside my creative world, which are necessary to function and live as a decent, responsible human being,” Paje elaborated.
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Physicality of Creation
eatsleepdreamwork seems to exist in that state of deconstruction and re-creation of the self.
When one says “self-deconstruction and recreation,” it means that the artist builds down their process to its barest parts, and then rebuilds it again, casting the artworks in a new light. These aspects of Lee Paje’s work portray the final products of creativity, existing in different states of abstraction, pondering on whether it changes the way we view these artworks from these new perspectives.
A series of works, for example, pairs up giant sculptures of hands interconnected with sketches of ocean waves. Four works have the individual words of the title—eat, sleep, dream, and work—superimposed over abstract paintings. Other sculptures by Paje represent physical manifestations of her art practice: the materials used for art, or some of her recurring themes.
These work in contrast to “Sit In My Retina,” for example, because of how it acknowledges the difficulty of converting our mind’s visions of creative aesthetics into something concrete and real, a fully fleshed-out artwork for the world to see.
How does one create a visual representation of the creative process that takes into account the translation of the idea from a mental headspace into reality? Does it change the way we look at abstract paintings, or sculptures, or any sort of artwork, when we are privy to the efforts it takes to create them?
“I think acknowledging artistry as work gives more value to the process than to the aesthetics of what is being produced, offering the perspective that the final output has undergone considerable time, skill, and physical, emotional, and mental labor,” she said.
Art is Still Work
The unique aspect of eatsleepdreamwork is giving audiences a look at the daily drudgery of creativity and translating them into relatable artworks that its audience would understand. Lee Paje makes an explicit case here that the beauty of art is how it interacts with our daily life: how it affects the ideas that we have and the materials we create.
“As a whole, creative work is not the romanticized notion of a solitary artist effortlessly producing inspired works of art,” Paje said of the idea behind the exhibit. “It requires patience, commitment, and the willingness to continuously invest time, effort, and skill, along with an openness to learning and collaborating with others.”
Photos by Elle Yap.
Related reading: Gender and Creative Practice: Being a Female Artist in Today’s World
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