In a new exhibition, The Stories We Tell, three emerging US-based artists explore themes of identity and memory.
Three emerging US-based art talents have made their first major introduction to the UK art scene in a new exhibition called The Stories We Tell.
Currently on display at the Victoria Miro gallery in Islington, the exhibition explores the themes of identity, memory and family with individual works from Tidawhitney Lek, Emil Sands, and Khalif Tahir Thompson.
Each of the artists’ works is rooted in their personal or familial identities and is enhanced by their own imagined concepts, portraying a range of uniquely compelling and inspiring stories.
Tidawhitney Lek
“Colour comes with many complexities.”
Warm, vibrant colours bring life to Tidawhitney Lek’s unique and mesmerising portrayals of diasporic life on the West Coast.
Based in Long Beach, the Californian artist is the sixth of seven children born to two Cambodian parents. Her childhood was filled with a blend of both Californian and Cambodian cultures, an experience which inspires the settings and scenes of her vibrant paintings.
Lek’s paintings are visually striking at first glance. Her use of rich, warm tones goes beyond making her pieces engaging – they’re integral in portraying the cultures that are central to the works.
“It’s one of the building blocks in my practice,” says Lek. “By use of colour I can manipulate or conjure psychological senses or observational perspectives that can suggest a kind of ambience or atmosphere.”
Brilliant, vibrant hues bring warmth to her scenes of California – or is it Cambodia? Much of Lek’s work has a sense of ambiguity when it comes to location, including features which could appear in either landscape.
The Long Beach area, where the artist lives, has one of the largest Cambodian communities in the US. Both her parents were part of a wave of Cambodians who moved to the US in the late 20th Century, after escaping the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, which took over the country in 1975.
“My parents negated talks of politics for the most part,” she says, “they’ve been scarred by war, governmental collapse, and genocide. Displacement, erasure and assimilation left a void, and it numbed any talks of politics in our household.”
But Lek’s paintings depicting life as a descendant of immigrants come during a dark time for America.
“As an American citizen descendant of immigrant parents, it’s very concerning the kind of political discourse that America is having right now.”
In one of her paintings, Can I Hold You?, a family sits on a bed, smiling and enjoying a wholesome, heart-warming moment. Yet just behind them, an old-fashioned television displays news coverage of protests about birthright citizenship – a sad reminder of the divisive conversations currently taking place across the US.
[Khalif Tahir Thompson. Courtesy the artists and Victoria Miro]
“I think it’s important to note, whether consciously or subconsciously, what we experience and pose the question about how direct and indirect our relationship is with it.”
Despite this, her portrayal of diasporic life is one of complexity, but fondness, which is also shown in the environments she paints. The women in her paintings are often seen wearing traditional Cambodian sarongs, and the scenes she depicts are full of bright, warm colours.
Flowers and palm trees are a common motif in her work, bringing beauty to their settings, but also highlighting the similarities between the West Coast and Cambodian landscapes – the palm tree, while often associated with the beaches of California, is also the national tree of Cambodia.
“As an American citizen descendent to immigrant parents, it’s very concerning the kind of political discourse that America is having right now.”
Tidawhitney Lek
Yet in the background of most of Lek’s paintings are the iconic golden pink skies of the West Coast, a connection to her hometown.
“I live in Long Beach, born and raised in Southern California, a city along the coast just a 15-minute drive to the bluffs from home. It’s beautiful around sunset. There was one day, I saw pink and thought this would be a great idea to insert into my artwork.
“I later learned that our pink skies are made from air pollution by the shipping ports close by. That insert turned into a deeper recognition of place that influenced the rest of my works.”
But these sunsets also go beyond indicating time or place, signifying some of the themes that she conveys in her paintings.
“I do consider them as metaphors too. There’s something about when the sun comes and goes away. It’s like a symbol of time passing, a departing moment, a transition or in-between that everyone or everything I know understands.
“That’s very majestic and powerful in a humbling way.”
Emil Sands
British artist and writer Emil Sands is making waves in the creative world.
At just 27 years old, the Brooklyn-based artist has studied at Central Saint Martins, Cambridge and Yale; exhibited his work in New York and Mexico City; and published an essay in The Atlantic magazine, with a full memoir also on the way. Born and raised in London, Emil is now making his hometown exhibition debut at Victoria Miro.
“My own body is at the core of my work.”
Sands was born with a form of cerebral palsy called hemiplegia, which affects the right side of his body, something he explores in his creative practice in different ways. His 2023 essay published in The Atlantic shared an honest and thought-provoking chronicle of his experience growing up with the condition – and led to him being commissioned to write a full memoir.
“It’s not so much that my cerebral palsy informs the paintings, but my work developed when I began to better understand the perspective with which my own set of circumstances provided me.”
Sands’ paintings often depict beach scenes, with the subjects stripped down to bathing suits – something he relates to his own struggles with body image.
“My relationship to my body changes all the time,” he says. “Mostly I wish it was different, sometimes I think less critically.
“I couldn’t pinpoint the exact ways that my work has shifted my understanding, but I am certain that painting every day helps me get a little closer to how I feel about myself.”
His work depicts a scene that has fascinated painters for centuries. From Rembrandt to Cézanne, bathers have been a recurring subject of portraiture throughout history.
Sands’ works are engaging, not because they show something radical and modern, but instead quite the opposite. The scenes he depicts are familiar, the images themselves feel a bit like a hazy memory that you could well have experienced yourself – a day sat on the sand, watching strangers and friends swimming in the sea.
“The beach has a timeless quality,” he says, “and I have enjoyed exploiting that.”
Shades of tan and blue fill the canvases in each of his paintings, showing the harmony between the sand, the sky, and the figures bathing in the water between them. In most of his works, the modern style of swimwear worn by the figures is the only indication of a time period. The people he depicts could be anywhere in the world, at any time.
“The beach has a timeless quality, and I have enjoyed exploiting that.”
Emil sands
“Up until now, I have been reticent to include allusions to modernity in my paintings,” says Sands.
“It has to be true that the age of social media impacts my work; I’ve never known a different age. But I’m not interested in capturing what my Instagram feed appears to obsess over – the ideal body. Instead, my work is about seeing and being seen.
“I’m fascinated by voyeurism. It’s a perspective I relate to closely. And one that social media demands of all of us constantly.”
Although Sands’ relationship with his body is impacted by his own unique set of circumstances, many of the themes he portrays will resonate with audiences. To be self-critical, particularly one’s own body, is part of being human, and it’s an experience which is also often exacerbated in modern digital age.
As for the artist himself, he believes creating these works has helped him process this experience.
“I couldn’t pinpoint the exact ways that my work has shifted my understanding, but I am certain that painting every day helps me get a little closer to how I feel about myself.”
Khalif Tahir Thompson
“I’m able to build a world around characters I’ve often never met, where the meaning and potency comes from the act of creating.”
Khalif Tahir Thompson’s creative process is quite different from that of most other artists.
The subjects of his paintings are all faces from pictures taken several decades ago, retrieved from a series of photo albums that originally belonged to his late grandmother. Everyone, from close relatives and family friends to strangers he has never known, serves as inspiration for his works.
However, we, the audience, will never see these people in their original settings – Thompson doesn’t want us to. Instead, the artist reimagines them in completely different environments, often in a vibrant living room or bedroom, or even somewhere not entirely definable.
“I like to think of the relationship between abstraction and representation as operating from the same source in regard to form and content,” he says.
His work depicts what he calls an ‘imagined experience’; real people are shown in a setting they were never actually in, and yet in another life, they easily could have been.
In many of Thompson’s paintings, the composition is somewhat incomprehensible, in an entirely deliberate way.
The perspective between his subjects and their environments is often distorted, and a range of symbols, including numbers and letters, are dotted randomly around the canvas – the paintings ask their audience to suspend their search for answers and logic, instead focusing on what could be.
Despite having a level of abstraction and often impossibility in the composition of his paintings, the artist says he does not consider himself a surrealist.
“I believe there are surreal moments, where the subjects or interiors dissolve into a more psychological space that ebbs and flows into what is real and what is not,” he says.
“But the work is less concerned with casting dream-like illusions, and more so in presenting subtle breaks from the familiar, into something you must interpret.”
By transporting his subjects into new and unknown settings and timelines, Thompson finds that he is able to create scenes and tell stories that he would otherwise not be able to.
“The work is less concerned with casting dream-like illusions, and more so in presenting subtle breaks from the familiar, into something you must interpret.”
Khalif Tahir Thompson
“It allows unbridled imaginative elements to work within the composition,” he says of his creative process. “It allows for multiple vantage points that are rooted in reality but build into something more transcendent and relatable, producing something often uncanny to the viewer.”
He has frequently cited Alice Neel, a 20th Century portrait artist, as a key influence in the style of his work.
“I think what drew me to Neel’s work was her handle with paint, how her depictions offered something more than just seeing,” he says. “My approach to painting can be very similar in that of directing the viewer.
“Having first entered painting through portraiture, I leaned into expanding my handle of material, use of colour, and technical mark making. I developed this practice learning from and relating to art history, and observing a wide range of subjectivity,” he says.
Among other influences, he names artists like Lucian Freud, Harlem Renaissance painter Kerry James Marshall and Chinese-American artist Martin Wong.
[Courtesy of the artists and Victoria Miro]
It goes unsaid that all art should be seen in person for the best experience. This is especially true of Thompson’s. The impact of his use of colour within his works cannot be understated – rich, striking tones invite the viewer into each scene and fill the canvases with life, in a way that cannot be sufficiently conveyed in a photograph.
At their heart, Thompson’s works are designed to challenge the viewer and encourage them to ask questions about race, home and identity, which is continued in the works on display in The Stories We Tell.
“The works included in the show were made in tandem with one another, each meant to convey something different. Challenging the work to evolve and steep with layered meaning.”
“I hope viewers who love painting leave the show with a new way of seeing, relating and understanding others and themselves, having been intrigued and entertained.”
The Stories We Tell is on display at Victoria Miro until January 17, 2026.
Featured image by Elise Wylie.