BY ALEX DRISCOLL
Artist and academic Tym Yee reflects on his family history through art
If there is anything Chatswood-based artist Tym Yee proves, it’s that it is never too late to start something new. With a background in academia, Tym discovered the world of art through his PhD. Though he always wanted to be an artist, it was when he started researching cultures of innovation in the workplace that he found people were often reluctant to give straight answers out of fear of saying the wrong thing.
Turning to art became the solution, with Tym recalling: “I’d have them make some sort of rudimentary prototype sculpture, and they’d say, ‘Oh, this texture here represents the frenetic energy of the workplace, and this cardboard thing that’s torn, represents the disconnect between departments, or whatever it might be.’”
During this time, he also met academics from Harvard University who were using art as a part of their research. Combined with an interest in comedian Anh Do’s popular show Brush With Fame, an interest in the medium was born.
Since 2020, visual art has become a central feature of Tym’s life. Within three years Tym’s artwork was being regularly displayed in the Chatswood Concourse and across the Northern Beaches, often portraying his family’s unique story.
Tym (right) and his father, Kevin
Tym is not your typical Chinese Australian, he explains. “The family history goes back to China in Guangzhou, and then onto Fiji, where my father was born, and then through to Sydney where I was born.” While in Fiji, the Yee clan were entrepreneurial, owning and operating multiple businesses such as an abattoir and a soda factory, before eventually moving to Australia when his father was 12.
This unique journey was depicted in Tym’s latest exhibition, Suva to Sydney, which has just finished at The Concourse. A combination of paintings, photography and installations, Tym teamed up with his 75-year-old father for the exhibition, continuing the family tradition of picking up art later in life. “Though I am not quite 75,” Tym joked.
Tym’s understanding of his family history, particularly the links to China, is only understood by him through stories and fragments left by his grandfather. He reflected on this in his exhibition, talking about how one of his pieces depicted the three opening lines of his grandfather’s memoir over three different landscapes. “The Chinese landscape is black, and the words are cut out. The panel over the Fijian landscape is a blurred acrylic. It’s a clear one, but you can’t quite see through it. But the words are cut out, and then the panel over the Australian landscape is clear with white text on it.”
In some ways, art has been Tym’s mode of connecting to his Chinese heritage, something he has at times felt dislocated from. Being a third-generation Australian on his mother’s side, and with the stopover in Fiji on his father’s side, Tym believes ‘there’s sort of a bit of a black hole in some ways, if you will, around China.’
Tim teamed up with his father for his exhibition, Suva to Sydney
Many of the artworks depicting the rural landscapes that would have been familiar to his grandfather have been depicted as vague and distorted, reflecting that disconnect. Even his family’s more recent Fijian history is not clear, with Tym lamenting: “I’ve been there before a couple of times, but I still don’t connect with it.”
Working with his father has allowed that window into Tym’s past to be opened just that little bit more, lending a new understanding to a poorly understood aspect of his father’s life. “It is not always easy for someone of that generation to talk about their feelings and memories,” Tym said. “So it’s been a delight in that sense.”
Conventional pathways are not something the members of the Yee family tend to follow. Whether it was taking the long way around to Australia via Fiji, or getting into art later in life, the history and stories that shape Tym can seem scattered. However, through his art, Tym Yee is starting to put those pieces together.