In Taiwan, Ken-Tsai Lee is a university professor and principal of a prestigious studio. In New York, where he recently studied English for two years, he found himself questioning the feasibility of Andy Warhol’s adage. “Where were my 15 minutes?” he says, “Who knew me? No one knew me.” With ambitions to expand beyond the localized Taiwanese market, he had been drawn to the city of strivers—“the capital of the world,” he says. “I knew I needed to overcome many problems if I was to achieve my goals,” he says from Taiwan, now preparing applications for U.S. graduate studies in design. “And the first problem was language.” As he realized how formidable his obstacles would be as a foreigner, Lee created a self-promotional poster series featuring his name in 12 languages, including Thai, Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Polish, that comments on the immigrant experience in general and marks his yearning for recognition—which came in surprising places.
Lee's ideas:
1- social design,
2- identity politics,
3- global reach,
4- be upbeat.