I make an installation to ‘summon’ these mental pictures into real life.

Introduction

The human brain contains a hundred trillion connections. It is an energetic matrix within which hovers our conscious and unconscious mind. Housed in a cranial space no larger than a family-sized loaf of bread, it is the place, ultimately, in which all our experiences are perceived and understood. Reality and fantasy, pain and joy, hope and despair, are all played out within this little bony chamber.

In her images, the Korean artist Jeeyoung Lee creates colourful installations that evoke her innermost thoughts and feelings. Each is contained inside a compact chamber just as the mind is housed within the confines of the skull. It is an intimate yet expansive space; constrained in physical size but wide-reaching in the concepts, cultural references, and complex emotions each image depicts. These are also spaces of painstaking care and ultimate transience, with each element hand-crafted by the artist over a period of months only to be destroyed once the image is made. The photograph is, like a memory, the last trace of a moment long gone. Yet, these are memories to share, to kindle in the mind of others those innermost thoughts and feelings. They won’t be our thoughts and feelings – not quite. As each image enters the energetic matrix of our own imagination it mingles in the intimacy of another mental chamber – complicit yet different. For art, like life, is perceived in the flow of energy; of scintillations that sparkle in the abstraction of the mind in ways that are as profound as they are fleeting.

Through her installations and photographs, Jeeyoung Lee invites you into the mind of another through the portal of metaphor and fable. These visual narratives are as familiar as a child’s bedtime story and as evanescent as a dream. Intimate chambers that speak to the personal and the temporal while echoing out to the universal.

Alasdair Foster

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Interview

What led you to become an artist?

My mother majored in painting at college but never made her debut as an artist. A few of her old oil paintings hung in our house. I recall staring at them when I was very little girl and telling myself that I would become an artist someday. However, my parents were very upset when I made the decision to go to art school and, to compromise, I majored in visual communication design. I was a member of the school’s filmmaking club, and often led the stage team, constructing the sets and props. That’s when I realised I was drawn to creating imaginary landscapes.

I took a break from school to work as an assistant in a commercial production company but it didn’t offer the creative freedom that I had expected. And besides, I was overworked and exhausted. I knew then that this was not to be my path. Returning to art school, I began thinking more about my identity. I chose photography as the medium for my graduate exhibition and returned to my childhood dream of becoming an artist.

What is it that this form of expression can achieve?

The picture I have in my head is not a real place. But it becomes my interpretation of reality through very real emotions and experiences. So, it’s real to me. I make an installation to ‘summon’ these mental pictures into real life. I create every element by hand so that the scene can become a reality for my audience as well. When I photograph the scene, it becomes another kind of reality as it is fixed forever. It allows me to look at my recreated reality from a more objective point of view as both protagonist and observer.

Where do your ideas come from?

My artmaking is all part of my effort to grow and progress. So, the most significant influence on my work is my life. I draw on subjects closely related to my personal experiences: childhood memories, dreams, my emotions and inner turmoil, relationships… and, beyond this, my life as an artist, my experience of Korean society, fragments from literature. All of which I combine in my artwork.

[Left] © Jeeyoung Lee ‘Resurrection’ 2011
[Right] © Jeeyoung Lee ‘Nightscape’ 2012

Can you give an example?

‘Resurrection’ [above left], which touches on ideas of death and rebirth, was inspired by the Korea folktale about Shim Cheong, and John Everett Millais’ painting of Ophelia. Here I am drawing on the symbolism of the lotus flower, which opens each day and closes up at night, suggesting cycles of rebirth. It is also known for its purifying function, flowering as it does from the dirty mud. The work conveys my personal experience of being born again by overcoming negative things that had dragged me down, cleansing myself emotionally. The figure revealed within an opening lotus bud implies a moment of growing from immaturity to maturity, of self-actualisation. Of being reborn into a new world.

The figure that appears in these images is most often yourself. Is your role personal or do you represent a kind of everywoman?

The characters in my work represent my own experience of life. So, it made sense that I perform that role. For me, a self-portrait is a good way to inhabit the artwork. While my gender is female and I am inevitably influenced by the expected role of women in my society, with its associated pressures, I don’t want my work to be interpreted on the basis of gender.

Do you find it therapeutic – cathartic even – to take your inner feelings and memories and create from them something visible and external to yourself?

Yes. I pour all my energy into creating each scene, which helps me resolve the emotions it envisions. When the installation is complete, I photograph it to create a permanent record and then dismantle it. Demolishing the set is a kind of ceremony in itself, emotionally complicated but, once it is over, I feel liberated. Each time I go through this process I find myself stronger.

A good example would be ‘My Chemical Romance’, with its theme of miscommunication and discord. I had become aware of how pipes creep and intertwine across the surface of buildings. Gas, water, waste… they are complex conduits in and out. Yet to me they also look like a kind of maze, a barrier… dangerous and insecure. They suggest the way I often find it impossible to communicate appropriately with other people, leaving room for misunderstanding. Afterwards, I think of the many ways in which I may have been misinterpreted in terms of anxiety, expectation, disappointment, conflict, and frustration. This holds for every possible type of relationship whether it be between couples, friends, family members, or society more generally. Here, in ‘My Chemical Romance’, the complexity of such emotions is visualised in the tangle of pipework, its danger in the black and yellow warning stripes. Meanwhile, the fog in the scene symbolises a moment of conflict and the black dog slowly walking out of the frame could represent someone who has given me much suffering in the past… or perhaps something less specific.

Many of your installations are created in a small, roomlike space. Is that simply a practical issue or is it a conceptual choice?

This is a conceptual choice, although there are also practical reasons for it. A room is a personal space that reflects an individual’s personality and tendencies. My works are reconstructions of my psychological landscape and the room (actually the set) represents the mind. It was this that led me to use a room-like space as the format of my work.

How long does it take you to create a work?

It depends on the project and its scale but it usually takes two to three months to complete one installation in my studio. However, considering the preliminary period of ideation and planning that precedes the process of construction, photography and subsequent disassembly, the overall production period can be considerably longer. For example, it took three full months just to create the meadow that appears in the work ‘Treasure Hunt’. I had to spend nearly eight hours each day weaving bits of craft wire to a mesh screen to complete the grass flooring.

[Left] © Jeeyoung Lee ‘The Best Cure’ 2007
[Right] © Jeeyoung Lee ‘Treasure Hunt’ 2010

Do you use Photoshop in the creation of your work?

No. My creative philosophy is to make everything physically. Building the installation is a gruelling process – almost like a spiritual journey – but it is one I enjoy. And, once it has been photographed, I generally destroy the installation, returning it to a state of nothingness. For me, this is a moment of transcendence.

The only time I use Photoshop is to erase the fishing lines I used to hang objects in mid-air.

You use colour in a very interesting way in your images.

The world portrayed in my work is a psychological landscape. Colour is a very important component. It’s a multifaceted tool that I use to emphasise theme and mood.

For instance, in ‘The Best Cure’ the red backdrop suggests danger and alertness. The blue wrapping on the candy represents reason, peace, calm… level-headedness. If the red is associated with problems we face in life, the figure buried under the candy symbolises a person who is in a difficult situation and looking for a solution. The blue candy is ironically offered as ‘the cure’. The two colours not only contrast each other visually but also in their meaning.

I am drawn into your images by the way they prompt me to build my own narrative. Can you tell me about ‘The Moment’ – an image that has particularly caught my imagination.

I was inspired by the ballet ‘Swan Lake’ and the Darren Aronofsky’s movie ‘Black Swan’. In ‘Swan Lake’, the black swan and the white swan have completely opposite characteristics, yet they are played by a single ballerina. I was especially impressed by the moment the ballerina transforms from a white swan to a black. The white swan must search within herself to find her alter ego, as must the black swan.

Here, I wanted to touch upon ideas around potential and possibility. Ultimately, the piece is about the protean nature of the self and the moment of self-transformation. I tried to capture the moment when a phenomenon manifests itself. All the elements – represented by the floating cubes made of a holographic material that reflects light in myriad directions – are coming together and dispersing again. In this image, I wanted to evoke the destruction of the norm, transformation, inner change, and the moment of rebirth – to speak of subtle emotional changes and hidden potentials.

For you, is it the installation or the photograph that is the principal artwork?

While it is true that it is the photograph that remains, I don’t think it’s meaningful for me to choose between the installation and the photograph as the principal artwork. The creation and dismantling of the installation are integral to my artistic process. I consider the construction, photography, and destruction of my work as one.

Has your creative practice changed over the years?

I consider myself to be an artist who uses photography as a medium rather than a photographer per se. I aim to diversify the mediums I explore, expanding my artistic horizons. I’m currently in the process of branching out into immersive installation, delving into video, and further exploring photography itself.

I approach installation and photography differently. For example, when I exhibit an immersive installation, I consider that I am inviting the audience directly into my heart. Physically engaging the space allows the audience a variety of ways to perceive it. Each person who experiences the installation becomes a part of the work; they complete it personally. My work is metaphorical. I don’t seek to limit its interpretation. I want the audience to discover their own story through my work, to be reminded of a moment of their own life. To trigger emotions and memories that have been tucked away… I hope it will be a special time for them.

© Jeeyoung Lee ‘Anxiety’ [diptych] 2013

Do you have a favourite among your artworks?

It’s actually hard for me to pick a favourite, but ‘Anxiety’ is special to me because, in it, I took an experimental approach to my emotional narrative. As the title implies, this piece is about worry and unease. The piece consists of two parts: a photographic diptych and a three-channel video. The former represents the external while the latter represents the internal. In the picture, the installation is painted in lustrous white, prompting the viewer to connect the rash of spheres with pearls, implying an inner emotional state. (Pearls are, after all, the product of suffering.) That said, I tried to minimise any emotional elements in the photograph. The video, on the other hand, adopts a more direct narrative through the performer’s voice, revealing an emotionally heightened state.

In making this work over the years, what have you learned about yourself?

This work is autobiographical, deeply rooted in my personal journey of self-reflection. As I continue this journey and gain more experience as an artist, I’ve discovered things about myself that I can develop and have learned how better to take on new challenges. But I am still learning about the many ways I can look at my own essence from different perspectives.

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Photo: Mike Yang

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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