Daniel Lie

Dan Lie

The Reek Testimonial 1, 2024
Watercolor, gouache, oil stick, oil pastel, soft pastel on paper

41 x 21 cm

TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

Dan Lie

The Reek Testimonial 5, 2024
Watercolor, gouache, oil stick, oil pastel, soft pastel on paper

38.5 x 28.5 cm

TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

In their practice, Dan Lie visualizes the cycles of transformation and mutual dependence that define ecological systems. At the heart of their work are non-human protagonists—bacteria, fungi, plants, and minerals—whose agency and presence are foregrounded in narrative structures that dissolve anthropocentric hierarchies. Their drawings and installations explore the coexistence of diverse life forms and their continuous participation in the processes of life, death, decomposition, and renewal.

The two drawings shown here are part of The Reek Testimonial, a series created in tandem with Lie’s installation The Reek—an evolving, decomposing sculptural work constructed from organic materials that change and disintegrate over time. These works mark an important moment in Lie’s artistic trajectory, functioning both as intimate studies and energetic premonitions of the larger installation. Composed of watercolor, gouache, and various oil and soft pastels, the drawings bear a tactile immediacy, as if the very process of fermentation, decay, and growth is taking place on the paper itself.

The Reek draws inspiration from a Bronze Age artifact in the collection of Berlin’s Neues Museum—a hollow oak tree trunk filled with small ceramic vessels, believed to have functioned as a wishing well. For Lie, this object became a point of fascination: "I’ve been going there regularly for the last two years… It seduced me. It’s this strange vessel of offerings, with no trace of human figures." That absence of human representation in ancient archeological material resonates deeply with Lie’s conceptual interests. “Humanity wasn’t the protagonist yet,” they reflect, “and my work deals a lot with finding other-than-human protagonists for the planet. What if we live on the planet of the flies? Or the trees? Or the dogs?”

At the age of 29, Lie returned to Indonesia and encountered the world of Indonesian comic books—an art form that had been part of their training during earlier years. This return sparked a renewed engagement with the narrative and graphic potential of drawing. The medium became a way to process personal memory, grief, and belonging—especially after the loss of their father to COVID-19. “I remember asking my father to draw comics,” Lie recalls. “Drawing was about home, about remembering.” That personal, memory-driven impulse still informs their work today—particularly in The Reek Testimonial, where drawing becomes a means to honor and give voice to unseen life forms and entangled histories.

The term “testimony” in this context suggests an offering—something left behind, a trace of something in transformation. These drawings are not static representations but dynamic documents of becoming. Just as The Reek installation decomposes in real time, so too do these images appear in a state of flux—intense, layered, and alive with the energies of emergence and dissolution.