My latest sculpture, “Ode to Hilma,” is a tribute to Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), a woman of immense bravery who dared to break with accepted conventions amidst rapid cultural and socio-economic flux during her lifetime. This sculpture expresses my deep affection for her visionary paintings and is a testament to her inspiring courage in capturing the present moment by merging elements of the past, present, and future. Af Klint was able to fuse complex ideas and belief systems from nature, religion, language, folk, art, science, and the occult into a radical visual vocabulary of symbols, geometric forms, ambiguous life forms, and representational motifs. This elasticity of temporality and the openness to connect convey a mutual search on how to materialize life force through the process of making. Af Klint’s paintings have been described as “a form of time traveler”. In my own work, I similarly seek to create sculpture that continuously transforms and evolves. -- Leelee Chan