CONVERSATIONS IN ISOLATION: Meet artist Gadisse Lee during Friday Gallery Walk
- Shannon Rae Gentry
- Oct 21
- 6 min read
Most of Gadisse Lee’s photography is made up of self-portraits, yet, each seems to take on a different personality within these varying moods and scenes. At first glance, I thought some were surely of different women.
“It’s usually just me, a tripod, and a timer. For example, that photo over there started as a failed shoot—” she gestures to “A Return and Not A Visit” behind her. “I was trying to do something with bubbles, but it didn’t work because I needed an assistant. Then a cloud passed over the sun, and the lighting changed dramatically. I threw on this mesh fabric, changed clothes quickly, and started jumping, spinning, and posing. That shot was the happy accident I loved most.”
Lee and I sit with curator Holly Tripman Fitzgerald in the gallery at 210 Princess Street (former Art in Bloom). Lee is visiting from Raleigh in preparation for her artist talk this Friday, Oct. 24, as part of her “conversations in isolation” exhibit. Lee has come to Wilmington’s beaches in the past, but this her first time downtown. “I actually think it’s more lively than Raleigh,” she notes. “There seem to be more people out and about, more things to do.”
Lee graduated with her BFA from UNC-Greensboro and moved to Raleigh in 2022. As part of Project 8179, “conversations in isolation,” is actually named for a phrase in a poem (written during COVID) that Fitzgerald read. “When [Lee] told me about her process—creating alone, reflecting on her emotions—it just fit perfectly,” Fitzgerald says. “These works really are conversations she’s having with herself: inward, reflective, and imaginative.”
“That’s exactly it,” Lee affirms. “When people ask about my process, I tell them it’s rooted in feeling. Sometimes I’m inspired by beauty, other times by stress or sadness. Taking portraits helps me work through those emotions. It’s self-care—and when I look at the finished piece, I feel joy, not pain.”
Fitzgerald remembers discovering Lee’s work while researching the ArtFields Festival in South Carolina. The festival features artists from across the Southeast, including Lee’s work that Fitzgerald found on their website. “I became a fan immediately,” she says. “Later, when we were curating for this space, I knew I wanted to reach out. I just love her work—it’s beautiful and so rooted in nature.”
Most of the scenes featured now at the gallery evoke a sense of being in nature, yes, but some also feel lost in nature. “Sleeping January,” “Lush” and “Better Days” show Lee’s tiny frame engulfed in tall green grass that I would assume is a meadow in Narnia. I imagine she found a quiet field on the outskirts of the bustling city. Nope.
“Just a small patch of grass off Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh,” she divulges. “It looks like an open meadow, but really, it’s just a tiny square of grass surrounded by rocks and trash. I framed it so it feels expansive and magical. That’s the fun of photography—turning ordinary places into dreamscapes.”
Lee says these hours-long trips alone are indicative of how photography has always served as a respite from the outside world; precious time with herself to process thoughts and emotions. There’s no vision or final destination in mind when she packs up her Corolla with her gear, props, vintage dresses and set pieces. She goes, parks, and lets creativity flow to see what happens.
Born in Ethiopia and adopted at 8 years old, Lee remembers coming here with only a single photo of herself, taken at about 3 years old. Home-schooled as kid, Lee also describes spending a lot of time alone. (Something only children like myself might also identify with.) She was quiet and inward, not because of what anyone necessarily said or did, but because she was a kid with complex feelings and emotions that many adults arguably struggle to articulate.
When Lee got her first point-and-shoot camera, she mainly used it to take photos of random objects. In her tenure as a photographer, she’s shot a little of everything—weddings, engagement shoots, graduation portraits, street photography, and even birth photography. But when she observed how another photographer used self-portraits to express himself, and in this case, his experiences as a gay man in the South.
“It really spoke to me,” she explains. “I thought, maybe I could do that—to express myself, to process things from my childhood. Creating these dreamlike worlds makes me feel grounded and joyful. It’s very therapeutic.”
With the human context of her process, many scenes start to become beautiful metaphors for finding peace or magic anywhere, even in the smallest patches of nature.
“I’m always looking for those spaces,” Lee says. “Honestly, I’m always shooting. It’s not like I sit down and say, ‘I’m going to create a new body of work for this show.’ I shoot portraits all the time. But since I’d already had two shows this year with older work, I wanted to make new pieces for a new audience. Most of what’s here was created specifically for this exhibition—only one piece is from last year.”
Aside from optical illusions, Lee also incorporates various bits of whimsy into her scenes and photos. Whether with props like the blue cloud-like wig she ultimately used for “Queen Skywool” and “Rain.”
“I wanted it to match the sky,” she says of the headpiece, of which people can see alongside other props, at the gallery. “The day I shot it, a storm was coming in, so the clouds were moving beautifully. I was out there for about four hours, and as soon as I got back to my car, it started pouring. I just made it.”
Lee blurs the line between what’s real and fantastical, and some of that can happen in the editing process to create the imagery and meaning she starts to see. We walk over to “Red” that’s set in a deep red room with Lee standing just right of center, leaving focus on her red pants … on fire.
“Did you really set them on fire?” I ask, half joking but ready for potentially a helluva story.
“I tried!” Lee laughs. “I started with real fire, then paper on fire, but it didn’t look right, so I Photoshopped it. I wanted it to look intentionally surreal anyway.”
Lee shot “To My Bones” at an arboretum near her home. Sitting inside a massive tree with a hollow space, she closed the background completely in Photoshop so it would look more like a giant cocoon or bone structure. Again, I mistaken it for a cave of sorts.
Whimsical details also appear in “Exhale” and “flutterstate.” In the former, Lee stands in a relaxed pose seemingly blowing out glittery pieces that balloon around her. The confetti—pieces of punch-hole paper that you could get from a busy office or school pre-turn of the century—also strategically serves as a top for Lee.
“That one took some work,” she notes of "Exhale." “I used Spirit Gum, which is used for prosthetic makeup, to stick the confetti to my chest. Then I set a timer, threw confetti in the air, and struck the pose. I did that for about 45 minutes.”
Butterflies also sit nearby, landing as naturally inside the gallery as she staged them in "flutterstate.” “I’ve always loved that image of butterflies landing on children,” she says. “It feels tender and magical. I had a bunch in my backyard this summer; they’d get drunk on fallen pears from our tree.”
This is Lee’s fourth show this year, and while there are no plans set in stone at this moment, Lee was preparing to take her camera and prop mobile out to immerse herself amongst the trees of Fort Fisher soon after our conversation ends.
DETAILS:
Photographs by Gadisse Lee
The Gallery @ 210 Princess St.
Artist Talk: Fourth Friday, Oct. 24, 7 p.m.
Exhibit will remain open until December 13
Thursdays-Fridays, 3-7 p.m.; Saturdays, 2-7 p.m.
