Born in Busan, South Korea, Maia Ruth Lee arrived in New York City in 2011 after living between Kathmandu and Seoul. Deeply informed by questions surrounding the self in times of dispersion, mobility, and rootlessness, Lee's multidisciplinary practice spans photography, video, painting, and sculpture. Using translation as an apparatus, Lee transmutes her works between mediums, connecting themes of borders, community, and language, with embodiments of carriers, loss, and self-preservation through process and materials. Relocating to Salida, Colorado in 2020 influenced much of Lee's recent work—the expanded space of her new setting is evident in the shifted work. Unraveled in order to be opened, layers of the Bondage Baggage serve as grids, atlases, maps, and readers. The impressions and tracings make way for Lee’s tender navigation of the contours and accumulations of a life.