Artful sands of change: Lee Mingwei reimagines ‘Guernica’ at M+ Museum in Hong Kong
The Taiwanese-American artist’s reinterpretation of Picasso’s masterpiece explores the themes of chaos and transformation.
Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei reinterprets Picasso’s “Guernica” in sand, exploring chaos, transformation and public engagement in a captivating live performance. Photo: HandoutTaiwanese-American visual artist Lee Mingwei recalled his first encounter with Pablo Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, Guernica (1937), at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City during the early 1980s.
Growing up in Taiwan, Lee’s exposure to art was influenced by the National Palace Museum in Taipei, where he admired delicate paintings on silk scrolls and rice paper – images of serene palaces, birds and flowers. In contrast, Guernica, with its contorted figures and harrowing depiction of the Spanish Civil War, captivated his young mind with images of a grieving mother clutching her lifeless child and fragmented bodies torn by violence.
“I guess my mum felt that there was something going on in my mind,” he said. “So she held my hand and said, ‘Artwork also could have a political message behind it. It’s not just about beautiful things.’ That really set in and changed who I am, although I didn’t know I was going to be an artist years later.”
Lee’s creative journey
Fast forward to 2006, and Lee, by then an established artist, found inspiration during a trip to the Bolivian highlands.
Caught in a sandstorm, he experienced a profound moment of clarity that would lead to his iconic sand reinterpretation of Guernica.
As sand covered his jeep, he stepped outside into an eerie silence. Amid the swirling grains, he noticed a subtle movement – possibly caused by a snake – etched into the sand. “In that moment, everything came together in a magical way,” Lee recalled. It was then that the idea of reinterpreting Guernica in sand took root.
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Artistic revelation unveiled
Presented by M+ museum in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, “Lee Mingwei: Guernica in Sand” is a large-scale installation held in The Studio.
Using sand as a textured and malleable medium, Lee sought to capture the essence of both chaos and transformation.
Inspired by the bombing of Guernica, a Basque town devastated during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso’s Guernica employs a stark monochromatic palette to heighten the sense of tragedy, evoking the appearance of newspaper print to emphasise its role as a historical record. Its symbolic figures – the bull, the horse and the anguished woman – convey suffering.
Lee’s reinterpretation of Guernica, however, remains deliberately unfinished. On June 28, he and a team of performers will complete the final section in a live performance.
Visitors will then be invited to walk on the sand painting, physically engaging with the artwork. As the performance concludes, the artists will gently sweep the sand, transforming the piece into an abstract composition – a poetic cycle of creation and destruction. The installation will be open to the public free of charge until July 13.