Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy

A Participatory Performance Installation about Access Intimacy

Participatory Performance Installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Image: Mark Stone

A participatory performance installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy, invites participants to Join the artist, Eugenie Lee, for a transformative moment of connection, healing, and compassion in a collective celebration of access, care, and intimate understanding.

Participatory Performance Installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy (start of the performance) 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Image: Mark Stone

For one evening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in celebration of The International Day of People with Disability, the artist welcomes participants to step into her healing space, where the concept of Access Intimacy* is brought to life in a metaphorically manifested garden. Based on one of her paintings, My Tree Lives Here, this meditative, participatory performance invites people to connect with the artist and fellow participants in an intimate and compassionate exchange. This artwork is a continuation of the artist’s exploration on invisible disability in the context of social well-being and advocacy.

Eugenie Lee, My Tree Lives Here, Oil on linen on board

Through this experience, participants engage in a gentle act of offering well wishes and care—no explanations or justifications needed. The installation creates a space for mutual understanding and generosity, fostering a deep sense of shared humanity.

Participatory Performance Installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy (Artist with a participant, wrapping red ribbons onto the tree) 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Image: Cindy Tan

A tree, a recurring motif in Eugenie Lee’s work, personifies the core of her being, her soul. It is unpolluted and sacred, providing strength and protection. During this performance, she brings her tree out in the open for people, sharing her vulnerability, openness, and trust with the participants.

Participatory Performance Installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy (participants planting seedlings) 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Image: Mark Stone

Eugenie Lee invites participants to plant tiny seedlings and wrap the tree in her garden. The tree cannot survive on its own. It needs support from seedlings and constant care and nurture to stay healthy. It needs nurturing well-wishes and prayers for food. In return, the tree gives back so much more.

Participatory Performance Installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy (A tree with well-wish messages, An island with seedlings) 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Image: Mark Stone

Participatory Performance Installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy (artist with participants) 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Image: Mark Stone

Eugenie Lee wears a traditional Korean undergarment, which could also be perceived as a conventional funeral outfit for Korean women, symbolising the state of chronic illness and pain that has had a devastating and pervasive effect on most of her adult life. This garment, deeply rooted in cultural significance, represents her vulnerability and a profoundly private moment. The incomplete nature of the petticoat or funeral dress, with the top half missing, mirrors her sense of incompleteness as a woman, mother, colleague, friend, and wife, and a feeling of not fully Korean as a 1.5th-generation immigrant in her adopted country. Eugenie Lee exists in a liminal state – she is neither terminally sick nor exuberantly healthy nor belongs to a part of the dominant white Australian culture.

Participatory Performance Installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy (artist with participants) 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Image: Mark Stone

*Access Intimacy is a term coined by disability justice activist Mia Mingus in 2011, describing a deep, intuitive understanding between individuals about each other's access needs—without the need for explicit explanation or justification. It refers to an effortless, unspoken connection that fosters mutual respect, comfort, and trust, especially between people with disability and their allies.

Access Intimacy transforms ordinary access into something far greater for our society. It is an elusive, hard-to-describe feeling when someone "gets" your needs - this may be a feeling that happens rarely or often - nevertheless, most of us have all felt this before. It is a familiar, good, loving feeling. We all have access needs whether we have a disability.

Access Intimacy is an interdependence in action, a feeling of freedom, lightness, and love that brings people closer and deepens connections. Access Intimacy doesn't always mean everything is 100% accessible; sometimes, it is simply someone being there with you, understanding your access needs, and providing comfort. It is not charity or a humiliating trade for survival but a powerful framework that enhances our lives by creating conditions for emotional, familial, and political intimacy to grow. Access Intimacy means care for each other in the truest form.

Participatory Performance Installation, Wellbeing Garden for Access Intimacy (island with planted seedlings) 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Image: Cindy Tan