Law Yuen Yee is an artist who is difficult to define. She excels at writing about artists and creative acts, and using painting to deconstruct and reconstruct words and concepts. "Traces" is divided into two parts, text and painting, yet at its core runs the same underlying questions: What am I? What is art? What is the nature of memory? These three questions are both independent and mutually explanatory.
The painting section records a series of pencil drawings, including self-portraits of hands, "mad woman speaks" confined by a picture frame, "work in progress" documenting the handmade book process, "cosmo-shells unearthed in my garden" collecting shells from the soil, and "tools Dad remade" with tools as the subject. From defining the self and questioning symbols, it extends to capturing the fleeting traces left by memory.
The text section consists of 7 articles, beginning with a discussion of creative space and ending with the gaze of the city. Everything is disappearing, she asks: What is memory? Does it still exist? She answers:
The true meaning of memory lies in each person's experience, It has its own language, Your memory is not my memory, My memory will not be greater than hers/his.
