User:Af4718/sandbox

Biography

On January 25, 1964, Lee was born to political dissident parents, in a South Korean village (Yeongju, Gyeongsangbuk-do), under the tyrannical rule of President Park Chung-Hee. The sculptural options were limited to children of dissidents, as during her studies at Hongik University in Seoul, she was exposed to solely stone and steel forms. As a result, she worked with softer, more malleable materials, such as fabric, foam, rubber and sequins, then experimenting with organic forms, originating from personal perceptions, memories and experiences. Furthermore, she played with themes of othering, directed from her experiences as a child of dissidents; outward appearances were deemed vital to survival, so Lee was curious about reactions to a grotesque outer shell.[5]

Lee Bul has become transfixed on the global arts scene and 3-8-6 generation. She and Choi Jeong-hwa founded the art group Museum (Myujiom) in 1987, in response to the politically charged minjung art groups. The Museum advocated “the meaning of being meaningless,” rather than possessing specific ideologies.[6] Lee Bul's participation in the Museum was a distrustful reaction to authoritarian ideas on aesthetics under years of military dictatorship. Like other 3-8-6 artists, her art focused on daily experiences and an interest in the body. Driven by the desire to shock the audience, her performances and sculptural installations of the 1980s were unconventional for their provocativeness and merging performance with unusual sculptural forms. “In later work, Lee explored themes of beauty, vulnerability, decay and dread” (Horlyck, 171), such as her Majestic Splendor series, which were installations of decomposing fish decorated with sequins, within clear Mylar bags. The ornamental pattern, representing class, gender and power, would serve as remnants of beauty through past memory. By the late 1990s, Lee Bul was known as one of the most radical and original, Korean artists. Furthermore, she was the first female artist to represent Korea at the Venice Biennale. The Korean Pavilion at Venice was guaranteed success with Lee Bul's award of Honourable Mention.

Lee currently lives and primarily works in Seoul, South Korea.

Cyborg Sculptures

Lee Bul's cyborg series was exhibited at the Artsonje Center in Seoul, Korea in 1998. The bodies did not have a distinct biological gender, but seemed to possess female, hourglass shapes. A monster (Monster: Black (1998)), a pile of excrement with multiple tentacles stands between them, a seven-foot tidal wave that towers over the sleek figures. Cyborgs, monsters and hybrids transcends models of identity involving nation, gender, race or class. The cyborg merges human and machine boundaries, providing an inherent acceptance of possible aberrations to the body. Lee's work is associated with cybernated aesthetics, or the human experience induced by technological object and artist. Lee Bul's cyborgs represent tropes for fear and fascination with the uncategorizable, the uncanny,” in her words.[16] Her body assumed monstrous appendages, in early performances, such as “Sorry for Suffering- You think I’m a puppy on a picnic? (1990),” where she attempted to wear a red body suit, while boarding a plane. Although her cyborgs stick to a coherent form in Amaryllis of 1999, Supernova and Crysallis of 2000, they have a disconnect from the viewer for their paradoxical characteristics: “male and female,” “glorious and sinister,” “familiar and alien,” “grotesque and strangely seductive.” [16] As Lee presents her own body as monstrous and alien, her cybernated bodies assumes the same nature. As a result, there is no comfort zone between object and viewer, and an attained conflict between human and nature and quest to attain immortality through technology- Live Forever (2001). Furthermore, a limbo between time and location has been established.

She causes the viewer to examine their doubts and the process of their journey, including the people that they may meet. Her cyborg series has given her the label of “feminist artist” by critics, but she passionately criticizes any irrational societal tradition or practice. For her, the body exists as an object and the self. The cyborg, despite its defective state, looks enduring and something to not be replaced or to be ashamed of; it can remain valiant. Therefore, it can successfully symbolize maturity and resonate with the viewer; they may see themselves in the cyborgs.[17]

Lee's fascination with early 20th century Modernism is reflected in her “Cyborg” series (1997-2000). Human and machine forms merge to give birth to a third. Female accentuated and idealized forms in ancient Greek culture, sexual charge of Japanese manga. Her cyborgs are simultaneously well-proportioned and sensuous and fragmented- a symbol of human imperfection, despite its biological and cyber nature to transcend physical and mental limitations. The sensual aspect alludes to the repressed life of ancient Greek women and women's objectified nature in manga. As a monster and cyborg, the body can explore the extremes beyond what is human.[5] The cyborgs, W1-W4, for instance, are four white figures hang from the ceiling, casting ghostly shadows. The headless, one-armed and one-legged figures are abnormally pornographic, with waists, breasts and buttocks accentuated by the armour-like corsets that don them. Lee states,”There's a very strange, ambivalent mixture of nostalgia for an impossible purity (usually embodies in the form of virginal young girls” and a dread of uncontrollable and potentially destructive sexual energy and power sublimated into the forms of machines.” (Volkari, 1) [18] Hans Bellmer, a male author writes about a man who identifies with his artificial female offspring with her position as a passive victim, while remaining on the outside, as a voyeur. Similarly, other avante-garde artists created not only puppeteered victims to bond with, but machine women who threatened to destroy or castrate men. Lee Bul incorporates these ideas of a frightening, castrating woman, a nice, innocent Asian woman, a puppet, flower, butterfly, insect, fish (symbols of beautiful fragility) and the woman as a damaged victim and growing, fertile, knotted techno monster. The intricate knots and tangles portray femininity as something that can not be identified easily, resulting in a paradoxical nature of being beautifully ornate, but disgusting and terrifying.

Bibliography

Amy, Michael. “ Lee Bul: Phantasmic Morphologies.” Sculpture 30, no. 4 (May 2011): 20- 27. Chung, Joon Mo. “Lee Bul: Naturally Provokes a Sense of Unease.” Koreana 23, no. 1 (2000): 64-67. Horlyck, Charlotte. “Contesting Form and Content: Art of the 1990s and 2000s.” In Korean Art: From the 19th Century to the Present, 165–77. London: Reaktion Books, 2017. Murray, Soraya. “Cybernated Aesthetics: Lee Bul and the Body Transfigured.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 30, no. 2 (2008): 38–50. https://doi.org/10.1162/pajj.2008.30.2.38. Volkart, Yvonne. “ This Monstrosity, This Proliferation {Sic}, Once Upon a Time Called Woman, Butterfly, Asian Girl.” MAKE Magazine 8 (September 2000): 4-7.