Footprints on ‘Guernica’: Lee Mingwei’s Meditation on Impermanence

Artist Lee Mingwei posed this question in Guernica in Sand, a work that transformed Picasso’s iconic 1937 painting—an enduring symbol of civilian suffering and the brutality of war—into a floor-bound image made entirely of sand: at once monumental and, by nature of its material, also fleeting.

Picasso himself resisted pinning down the meaning of Guernica, remarking, ‘It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols . . . The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.’^[1] In a similar spirit, Lee—who first encountered the painting as a child at MoMa, where its scale and message left him ‘shocked’— offered Guernica in Sand as an experience that invited viewers to witness, reflect, and, ultimately, participate in its transformation.

As with Simon Fujiwara’s reimagining of Massacre in Korea, which turns Picasso’s painting into a layered commentary on image-making and truth, Lee’s work continues a conversation about how images of war are remembered and reinterpreted.

As part of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation, the work culminated in a final transformation toward the end of the exhibition’s run at M+. Lee returned with three collaborators to guide it to its final stage of becoming.

At intervals throughout the performance, visitors stepped onto the surface of the work, blurring its lines beneath their feet, unsettling the composition with their footprints, and weaving their presence into the work.

Then, in a gesture that marked the completion of the artwork, Lee and his collaborators began to sweep the sand, dissolving the image into a new, abstract composition—the final step in the life of Guernica in Sand.

Guernica in Sand serves as a reminder that art does not need to remain to leave a lasting impression. Says Lee: ‘Guernica in Sand really came together to talk about impermanence . . . because there’s nothing permanent in the world except the idea of impermanence.’ Even the weightiest histories, suggests Lee, can rest in something as delicate as sand.