In The Magic Queen, Mata Lee revisits the iconography of playing cards by transposing it into her own visual universe—pared down, symbolic, and deeply contemporary. The feminine figure, duplicated like in a mirrored card, is framed within a vertical composition that feels both austere and open, where gestures, gazes, and curves function as narrative as well as aesthetic signs.
The delicate, translucent insect wings operate as a metaphor for transformation: they evoke transitional states, shifting identities, and subtle passages between strength and fragility. The symmetrical composition—typical of royal cards—is reinterpreted here with minimalist softness, stripped of any superfluous ornament. Everything plays out in the tension between the frontal presence of the face, the widely spaced eyes, and the expansive pictorial space that surrounds them.
By drawing on the graphic codes of playing cards (pictograms, symmetry, rigid framing) while infusing them with her intimate visual language, Mata Lee transforms the traditional queen into an enigmatic, almost mythological figure—one who seems simultaneously to watch and to be watched.
The work probes dualities—power and delicacy, magic and vulnerability, authority and dream—while anchoring this queen within a deeply personal, interior dimension.
In The Magic Queen, Mata Lee revisits the iconography of playing cards by transposing it into her own visual universe—pared down, symbolic, and deeply contemporary. The feminine figure, duplicated like in a mirrored card, is framed within a vertical composition that feels both austere and open, where gestures, gazes, and curves function as narrative as well as aesthetic signs.
The delicate, translucent insect wings operate as a metaphor for transformation: they evoke transitional states, shifting identities, and subtle passages between strength and fragility. The symmetrical composition—typical of royal cards—is reinterpreted here with minimalist softness, stripped of any superfluous ornament. Everything plays out in the tension between the frontal presence of the face, the widely spaced eyes, and the expansive pictorial space that surrounds them.
By drawing on the graphic codes of playing cards (pictograms, symmetry, rigid framing) while infusing them with her intimate visual language, Mata Lee transforms the traditional queen into an enigmatic, almost mythological figure—one who seems simultaneously to watch and to be watched.
The work probes dualities—power and delicacy, magic and vulnerability, authority and dream—while anchoring this queen within a deeply personal, interior dimension.
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