JeeYoung Lee, a media artist based in Korea, shoots the “invisible” offering excerpts from her heart, her memory, and her dreams. Restrained by the inherent limits of the conventional photographic medium, she adds plastic creativity and theatrical performance to it to blow life into her immense needs of expression and interrogation.
JeeYoung Lee creates a universe born from her mind within the confines of her 9 x 20 ft studio for weeks, sometimes months. She spends extensive time and effort to exclude any ulterior photographic alteration. In each set, Lee includes her self-portrait. However, her self-portraits are never frontal because she is not showing her visual aspect but her desires and her frame of mind. Her creations act as a catharsis, which allows her to accept social repression and frustrations. The set stage gives her time to meditate about the causes of her interior conflicts and hence exercise them; once experienced, they in turn become portents of hope.
“Analyzing the self is one of the motivating factors for me in creating. People try to capture a moment in time in photography all the time. We always go back to these images to remember the moment. The mental landscape that I capture on camera is the same. It is a personal record that helps me document and reflects my life.”
Recipient of multiple artistic awards including the Sovereign Art Prize (2012), JeeYoung Lee is one of the most promising up-and-rising figureheads of the younger Korean artistic world. Following the success of her first solo show “DAZED:Stage Of Mind” at Gallery Kong in Seoul, the exhibition traveled to France, Australia, Northern Ireland, and Brazil. Her work has been featured in the worldwide media and has been collected by Osan Culture Foundation, Osan, Korea; Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Kiyosato, Japan; Incheon Foundation for Arts & Culture, Art Bank, Incheon, Korea; OCI Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; CAN Foundation, Seoul, Korea. She has participated in group exhibitions such as Photo + Shift, Kim Bo Seong Art Center, Seoul, Korea; Narration of Healing / Artistry of Healing, Lotte Gallery Gwangbok, Busan, Korea; Photography Istanbul, Yapi Kredi bomontiada, Istanbul, Turkey;Beginnings, Forever: From the Collection of Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts / Shinnyo-en, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, USA; 29 Rooms by Refinery29 NYC, NY; A Contemporary Reference of the Human Condition, Edition ONE Gallery, Santa Fe, USA; Imaginarium, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; ArtGate Gallery, New York, USA