Lindy Lee

Lindy Lee, an Australian artist with a practice spanning over forty years, has consistently drawn on her Chinese heritage, interweaving philosophies from Taoism and Zen Buddhism that view humanity and nature as one. Her latest work, Ouroboros, is an immersive sculpture commissioned for the National Gallery of Australia's 40th anniversary. Standing nine meters wide and over four meters tall, Ouroboros invites viewers to see and inhabit her vision—walking through a vast, circular space that evokes the cycles of life, death, and rebirth.

Named after the ancient symbol of a serpent eating its own tail, Ouroboros embodies the eternal cycle, a concept reflected across cultures. Positioned at the entrance to the National Gallery, the sculpture invites visitors to pass through it and into a chamber where light and darkness come together. Thousands of perforations cover its surface, allowing light beams to dance through and transform the space. By day, its mirrored steel reflects the transitory world around it—people, clouds, and birds; by night, it has an internal glow, returning light to its surroundings, a symbol of the continuity and interconnectedness of all things.

Bringing Ouroboros to life required a massive collaborative effort. Crafted from thirteen tonnes of recycled stainless steel, this artwork represents the most ambitious and largest commission of Lee's career. This chamber of light and shadow was meticulously constructed from eight unique sections, each requiring precise engineering to ensure its shape, weight, and cantilevered form could be realized. Over 60,000 hours of labour and the expertise of countless fabricators, welders, engineers, and finishers culminated in a work that took over two hundred pairs of hands to create.