The Imagined Motherland: Talk with Caroline Ricca Lee

Index welcomes you to a talk with Caroline Ricca Lee, an artist and researcher from São Paulo, Brazil. They will speak about their art practice which based on the exploration of archiving, history, fiction, and memory of Asian narratives.

Being a third-generation Chinese immigrant and a fourth-generation Japanese immigrant in São Paulo, Caroline’s perception of their homeland was shaped by unofficial memories including family photographs, embodied cartographies, memoirs, and ancestral memorabilia. These elements also served as the basis for their artwork. Simultaneously, the Sino-Japanese War’s competing narratives gave rise to Caroline’s primary concern in their research: territories of bodies and marginalized identities. Asian heritage, Brazilian culture, and the unresolved legacy of European colonization are all woven together in this noisy body of work that is a part of the fabric of a multicultural and diasporic identity.

In this talk, Caroline Ricca Lee will present their art practice on the idea of the imagined motherland, discussing how they uses unofficial memories to practice negotiating different media, techniques, and literature, as well as materializing the never-seen motherland.

The talk is organized by Lois Ding, who’s currently interning at Index.

Caroline Ricca Lee (b. 1990, São Paulo, Brasil) is an artist and researcher whose practice explores the archiving, history, fiction, and memory of Asian narratives through decolonial, queer, and feminist epistemologies. Ricca Lee works in the field of sculpture, installation, critical writing, performance, and video. Awardee of the ISOLA SICILIA Prize at the 30th Artissima Art Fair, Torino (2023). Recipient of The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia South America in 2025. Artist-in-residence at Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Waldberta, Germany (2016); Fondazione Oelle, Italy (2023); Pivô Art and Research, Brazil (2024); IASPIS, Sweden (2025); La Becque, Switzerland (2025).

Letian Lois Ding (b. 1998, in Chongqing, China) is studying at the The International MA Programme in Curating Art at Stockholm University and is currently doing an internship at Index. Lois has an academic background in museology, history, and archaeology, and has worked as an assistant curator in China Three Gorges Museum. She is interested in museum communication, contemporary Asian art, and interplay of national history and personal memories.