Justine Lai

Justine Tamiko Lai works primarily in painting and “direct” animation, a method of painting and scratching directly onto movie film. The imagery and materials in her work come from activities that explore our material relationship with the past: browsing, collecting, bidding, scrimping, saving, decluttering, and making-do. She focuses on Asian American history and the roles of technology and labor in the development of cinema and animation, meditating on the perceived value and desirability of people, their work, and their things.

Justine Tamiko Lai is an artist based in Queens, New York. Raised in Sacramento, California, she earned a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work has been exhibited at Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia, PA) and Gawker Media (New York, NY).