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Lesley Anne-Cao

Fugue Encore 
2021

Circular wooden display table, ai-generated and 3d-modeled plastic
lingling-o variations, single-channel video
Variable dimensions

Lesley-Anne Cao’s practice involves interrogations of objects: from their making, use, circulation, and how these contexts might inform an object’s value and function. For her commissioned work for this exhibition, Cao looks at the social life of the lingling-o, a class of jade ornaments that have circulated across the South China Sea, mainland and maritime Southeast Asia, and
Taiwan, which attests to the intimacies of what historian Eric Tagliacozzo imagines as the “Sino-Southeast Asian embrace.” Archaeologists have proven that the lingling-o traveled with the Austronesian language— from Taiwan to Polynesia to the Indian Ocean to Africa. Inspired by archaeologist Victor Paz’s method of “artifact assemblage,” she fabricates the artifacts using an AI-program that creates designs from a sampling of existing photographs and records of the objects. These designs are then modeled and are 3D-printed using plastic filament. What comes out of these processes is a selection of “inauthentic” artifacts that allude to the craftsmanship and the circulation of the lingling-o but nonetheless assume a spectral materiality in the form of a translucent, almost ghostly, replica. For Cao, “The work engages with the status of the lingling-o as a document of an open-ended history and as archival material. The generation of new images and objects based upon the lingling-o suggests that the archive is very much alive in the present, integral to the creation of new knowledge and methods of articulation.”



Lesley-Anne Cao is a visual artist based in Quezon City, Philippines. Her practice is a series of divergent processes that explore the interplay of materiality, exhibition making, and fiction. Her work makes use of recognizable materials—books, plants, debris, precious metals, and money—towards the actualization and presentation of fictional objects and environments. Cao holds a BFA from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts - Diliman. Recent exhibitions include A song plays from another room at mo_ (2021) and Hard and soft prayers at The Drawing Room Gallery (2021). She has been granted artist residencies in Taiwan and Finland and has also presented work in Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Indonesia.