Yuvinka Medina: Your sculptures often exist in a state of slow transformation, evoking both physical and emotional tension. How do you see the relationship between decay, vulnerability, and human bonds in your work?
Mire Lee: A body that rots is a body that has lived, that has been touched, held, connected. There is something deeply erotic and archaic about the inevitability of breakdown, about the way we dissolve into each other, into time, into the world. Although the installation included in this exhibition is rather a loud one, I am drawn to slowness, to languidity and its melancholic passivity. In sleep, in inertia, intelligence and articulation slip away, and we become similar to one another, more universal.
Biography
Mire Lee (b. 1988, Seoul) based in South Korea and the Netherlands. She holds a BFA from the College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University (2012). Lee has had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2024); the New Museum, New York (2023); MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2022) and Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2020). Group exhibitions includes National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2024); High Line Art, New York (2023); and the Venice Biennale (2021). Her work is part of several public collections, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Fundacion Medianoche, Granada; and the MMCA (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), Seoul.
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Image: Mire Lee, Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love, 2024. Used formwork panels, cement mixers. Dimensions variable. Installation view, territory, Sprüth Magers, Berlin, 2024. Photo: Ingo Kniest © Mire Lee. Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers
