Drafts (2019) is a recent acquisition by Dionne Lee, whose work across photography, collage, and video examines power, survival, and personal history in relation to the American landscape. Here, Lee assembles found and self-made photographs—cut, layered, and recalibrated—into a visual collage that threads throughout the presentation. Landscape is not a backdrop but an active field of training, testing, and repair: material and conceptual terrain where knowledge is made.

Crucially, the title’s plural—Drafts—proposes that nothing is static. A draft is an attempt, a rehearsal toward form rather than a final rendering. Lee advances this ethos across the installation: images remain open to revision, contingent on one another, and legible as process. The work invites us to read photographs not as discrete entities but as co-dependent materials whose meanings accrue in relation—circulated, captured, and collaged—over time.

This presentation underscores The Gund’s sustained commitment to artists connected to Ohio whose practices deepen our understanding of place and its layered histories. Drafts offers students and scholars an entry point to investigate land use, memory, embodiment, and survival strategies through photographic methods. The work will anchor seminars, collection-based study, and future lines of inquiry across campus.

A public conversation with the artist is planned for April 2, 2026.