Asian Artists to Watch 2024: Mire Lee
Each year, we identify the Asian artists on the rise, shining a light on the exciting and provocative works enriching the region’s artistic and cultural landscape. South Korean artist Mire Lee shares her story.
Born in South Korea and now living and working between Seoul and Amsterdam, Mire Lee is a sculpture artist who makes art using concrete, steel, silicone, oil and clay, turning these industrial materials into raw, primordial and yet highly mechanised structures, which are both unsettling and visceral. Lee’s sculptures force the viewer to confront uncomfortable subjects of fetishism, obsession and boundary violation; they’re multi-sensory forms that explore the relationship between organic and mechanical, horror and arousal, and
life and decay.
Lee has just been announced as the next Hyundai Commission artist for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, with new site-specific work to debut in October 2024. Tate Modern director Karin Hindsbo calls Lee “one of today’s most intriguing and original contemporary artists”. Before this, she also received the Special Prize of the Future Generation Art Prize in 2021, as well as the Pontopreis MMK in 2022. She’s held a number of solo and dual exhibitions worldwide, including Mire Lee: Black Sun at New York’s The New Museum (2023), As We Lay Dying at Kunstmuseum Dan Haag, Hague (2022), Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt (2022), Carriers in New York with Tina Kim Gallery (2022), HR Giger & Mire Lee at Schinkel Pavillon in Germany (2021) and Carriers at the Art Sonje Centre, in Seoul (2020).
Lee received a BFA in Sculpture in 2012, and a MFA in Media Art in 2013, both from the Seoul National University College.
See our Art Basel Hong Kong coverage here.
Source: Prestige Online
