A Chop That Breathes presents outcomes from an extensive research and making period by designer, academic and artist Kerry Ann Lee. In a collaboration over time and space, Lee incorporated letterpress and typographic ornaments once belonging to artist Guy Ngan into exploratory compositions suggesting dance steps, clouds, koru and celestial maps.

Guy Ngan 顏國鍇 (1926–2017) was a trailblazer, celebrated as one of the first Asian artists in Aotearoa. Ngan’s output was prolific and he worked in a range of media including painting, drawing, textiles, furniture, architectural design and large-scale public sculpture commissions. Less known are his experiments with printmaking.

The ‘chops’ Lee incorporates here were gifted to Wai-te-ata Press by Ngan’s daughter, Liz Ngan. Lee admired the beauty of the letterpress blocks, which include hardwood forms, hand-carved by Guy Ngan, and the potential they held for play. Through her ongoing project, Lee continues Ngan’s exploration of the capacity of the forms for visual storytelling and illustration through a series of compositions made with both traditional printmaking and digital tools. 

An animation brings layered dimension to the printed forms. It allows the forms, Lee says, “to roll off the printed page and into a room to fill a space. The animation offers a whimsical dimension to letterpress printmaking – which can be a very formal, precise craft.”

A Chop That Breathes also references printer chop seals that identify a maker, and the Chinese character qi, 气, or energy, with the aspiration to ‘breathe life’ or ‘bring the world to scale’ on the page, working with graphic elements. In displaying a sense of play, curiosity and radical joy in form and movement, the project as a whole reveals a counternarrative to struggle – a dimension of cultural expression that is not often visible within Chinese New Zealand settler history.

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Kerry Ann Lee is a visual artist, designer and researcher whose interdisciplinary practice spans art, design and publishing. Her work explores cultural identity, diaspora and heritage, drawing on Chinese New Zealand histories and global perspectives. Her creative collaborations have included projects with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, residencies at the School of Visual Arts NYC, SOMA México, Taipei Artist Village, Santa Fe Art Institute and Yellow Brick Athens, presentations at Booked: Hong Kong Art Book Fair and Sprint Milano, and exhibitions at the Beijing International Art Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.

As Associate Professor in Design, she teaches Illustration, Visual Communication Design and Critical and Contextual Studies across various undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Toi Rauwhārangi, College of Creative Arts at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University.

Kerry Ann Lee draws on shared experiences with Guy Ngan as inspiration for this project. They both are from Te Whanganui a Tara Wellington, share Cantonese heritage, and are alumni from Ngā Pae Māhutonga, the Wellington School of Design at Massey University. Like Ngan, Lee’s work is informed by cultural hybridity in Aotearoa, the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

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Kerry Ann Lee is grateful for support towards this project from Creative New Zealand, the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University and Wai-te-ata Press at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University.