brilliant 30: Yunhee Lee

Representing dreamy, mystical narratives through pottery

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Yunhee Lee, the story of the girl who encounters various obstacles, while travelling for herself to find peace from anxiety and desire.

In Yunhee Lee’s work, she replaces Dante’s eponymous protagonist with a female character. She encounters various obstacles in her search for peace from anxiety and desire. Each of these obstacles symbolizes classic oppositions such as good and evil, life and death. But contrary to the kind of linear narrative one expects from a film, for example, Lee offers the audience different options for interpretation. Rather than remaining passive, they may move freely within the narrative. In this way, Lee’s work resembles the contemporary digital world where choice proliferates, and people create their own paths through information.
Key to this project, then, is the formation of endless and different narratives from a state of ambiguity and choice. The female protagonist bears a strong resemblance to Lee herself, making the work appear autobiographical. Yet the involvement of the audience in the story and the resulting potential for many different outcomes renders the girl instead as a meta-character – replaceable by anyone. Her character is continuously deconstructed and reformed in the mind’s eye of separate viewers, completing endless and personal Divine Comedies.

In the words of Marshall McLuhan, “The medium is the message”. Perhaps the real significance of <The Divine Comedy>, then, is its structure, and not the story it contains. The audience is given the freedom to choose – but might feel insecure on the verge of their choices. In this work of art, as in life, the process of making choices is the journey; it is the means by which to discover identity and, eventually, to recover.

Interview

Q. What kind of art work do you make?

I mainly work on three-dimensional ceramic sculpting. I’m also working on variety of different projects including installation based on handcraft works, and designing products produced in small quantity only.

Q. Why do you choose to work with ceramics?

Q. The form of your work is very delicate. Could you explain your working process?

This is the sequence: research, idea sketch, forming, making a mold, slip casting, molding, drying, biscuit firing, drawing, glazing and biscuit firing...When working on more complicated patterns, I repeat the process of drawing and biscuit firing.

Concentrating my research on books and the internet, I have accumulated a huge amount of knowledge; this, in turn, has furnished my understanding of my own interests and path. I have been able to discern my own needs, naturally. This is how I discovered my own taste, and how I now collect the fundamental elements for my work. - Yunhee Lee -

Q. I can’t confidently say whether your work has a particular religious background or not, but it suggests that it does. Do you have any religion? If you are not religious, what really influences you?

Actually, I’m Christian. I can’t rule out the possibility that my religion influences my work to a certain degree, but it didn’t start on a religious basis. I might have been more influenced by Western medieval imagery and Amrita paintings- those might have created some religious aura. I’m also interested in animation, film, food and cultural history.
I have been keen on collecting images since I was a child. I would rather cut out the pictures from cartoons than read them. Even the encyclopedia wasn’t safe. These processes have had more influence than anything else on my background as an artist.
Concentrating my research on books and the internet, I have accumulated a huge amount of knowledge; this, in turn, has furnished my understanding of my own interests and path. I have been able to discern my own needs, naturally. This is how I discovered my own taste, and how I now collect the fundamental elements for my work.

Q. Could you explain your recent work <The Divine Comedy>?

<The Divine Comedy> is a work I created based loosely on Dante’s literary series with the same name. For me, the <Inferno> is the most interesting part. Many different layers of staging appear in it. One can think of it as a process of healing from anxiety and desire, that’s why it comes across more like a narrative. Actually, my next challenge is to make an animation. Even though I have a lot of stories to tell, I often face limitations when I work in ceramic. As I am very into animation and its capacity for stories, I am planning to create one of my own.

Q. This explains why you added more creative layers to the narrative in <The Divine Comedy>. Could you tell us more about that?

My version of <The Divine Comedy> series are episodes which occurred during a sleepless night. There lived a girl who was never happy because she had knowledge of the future. In seeking peace, she encountered many obstacles and oppositions – love in heaven and love on earth, good and evil, life and death. These oppositions can be viewed either way, depending on one’s perspective. Double-sidedness is the essential ambiguity of mind, life and existence. At the very end of the journey, the girl finds peace. At last, she escaped her sensual being to become her real self.

Q. Do you expect the audience to interpret a particular meaning from your works?

The narrative embedded in my work is based on desire, anxiety and healing. Although it is manipulated, it is a variation on fundamental myths and stories of growth. Desire and anxiety are the essential elements required for human being in general; karma is the essence of life. Life is ultimately a process of reaching nirvana from karma, of supplementing life with death, and of returning from presence to absence.

Q. What is the definition of art for you?

I think it is something that can alter your whole life rather than please you momentarily. James Wood said: “No matter whether it is a painter, a poet, or a novelist, the biggest benefit we take from artists is the expansion of our compassion. Art is something closest to our life. It is a way for us to expand our experience and our contact with mankind beyond the personal boundary of destiny.”

Introduction to <brilliant 30>, leading you to 30 inspirations of young artist

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Day

Porcelain_120 x 120 x 250cm_2013
Night

Porcelain_120 x 120 x 250cm_2013
Night(Detail)

Porcelain_120 x 120 x 250cm_2013
La Divina Commedia

Porcelain_Dimensions Variable, 2013
La Divina Commedia

Porcelain_Dimensions Variable, 2013

Profile

Lee Yunhee’s artistic practice is focused on three-dimensional ceramic work. In addition, Lee has produced installation work based on handicraft methods, and works also in design. She habitually creates a narrative based on an existing work of literature. In form, her work might remind one of medieval European or Buddhist Amrita paintings. It is perhaps inevitable that it bears such a resemblance, as it is based on myths and tales found in religious history.

Lee is interested in the essential desires and insecurities of human beings. She strives to reach a state of peace – in other words, to recover from anxiety. For her, art neither satisfies her creative desires, nor demonstrates her talent. It is instead an ongoing process of fulfilment and recovery, drawing her ever closer to peace.