LEE BUL

Born in 1964, Lee Bul made an early break with her academic training (BFA in sculpture from Seoul’s Hongik University) to establish her reputation with provocative works that crossed genres and disciplines, exploring themes of beauty, corruption, and decay. Now in the fourth decade of her career, she is a pioneering figure to a younger generation of artists influenced by the sensibility and method of her early work, the iconoclastic performances, and multi-sensory installations that pushed the formal and conceptual boundaries of visual art.

Since the early 2000s, her work has engaged with themes of utopian modernity, the historical avant-garde in art and architecture, and the rise and fall of progressivist projects to reinvent the world, all deeply informed by her experience of growing up the daughter of political dissidents during a period of turbulent political and social transformation in Korea.

Lee Bul’s work is held in prominent public collections throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Modern, London; British Museum, London; Musée d’Art Moderne Grand Duc Jean, Luxembourg; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; M+, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul.

She is the recipient of the 9th Ruth Baumgarte Prize (2023); Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2022); Ho-Am Prize in the Arts (2019); Insignia of Officier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2016), presented by the Ministry of Culture, France; and the Noon Award (2014), presented by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. She was also awarded a Menzione d’Onore (1999) for her contribution to the 48th Venice Biennale.
In 2024, Lee Bul was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to create sculptures for the niches of the museum’s iconic Fifth Avenue facade. The Genesis Facade Commission: Lee Bul, Long Tail Halo opened on September 12, 2024, and remains on view until June 10, 2025. A major touring survey co-organized by Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, and M+, Hong Kong, is scheduled to begin in fall 2025 at Leeum.

Courtesy BB&M