MIRE LEE
b. 1988, South KoreaMire Lee’s kinetic sculptures and installations analyse how humans feel about technology and progress—she creates deliberately low-tech mechanised organisms from steel, clay, silicone, lubricants, motors and liquids. Her visceral work engages with fetish culture and the grotesque, often in the form of corporeal abstraction.
Early Years
Mire Lee was born in 1988 in Seoul. Her father was an artist (although she didn’t grow up with him) and her mother ran a publishing company as well as teaching art. She wanted to become a filmmaker and she loved Quentin Tarantino and David Cronenberg movies, as well as manga comics. Subcultures fascinated her—and continue to do so. She attended the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University, opting for the art school because she failed maths in the national exam. She gained her BFA in 2012.
Mire Lee: Artworks
Mire Lee’s kinetic sculptures pull no punches, re-creating the messiness of bodily fluids, pulsating intestines and decaying flesh using liquids, motors, ceramics, fabrics and machinery. She addresses fantasy and fetish and technological advance, often provoking an emotional reaction from viewers.
- In her Carriers series (2020–2021), Lee recreated peristalsis (where muscles constrict and relax in order to create a forward flow) using PVC hoses arranged into intestine-like forms through which pigmented glycerine flowed via a special pump. In her 2020 exhibition at Seoul’s Art Sonje Centre, some Carriers “crawled” along the floor while others hung from the ceiling.
- At the 2022 Venice Biennale, Lee created Endless House: Holes and Drips, a metal scaffold structure mounted on a raised metal platform holding bisque-fired ceramic forms attached to poles using rope. A dialysis-type machine allowed lithium carbonate and iron oxide glazes to drip down on to the clay, and they were given a final firing after the exhibition closed. “The idea of having a lot of holes in the work connects to being very open as a person, which represents vulnerability to me,” she told Ocula.
- Open Wound, Lee’s installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2024, reimagined the space as an “industrial womb” with fabric “skins” hanging from the ceiling on metal chains. At one end of the hall, a motorised turbine span slowly, discharging liquid into a tray. Technicians in Lee’s “factory” moved the wet skins to dry, working alongside the machinery to create a cycle of production and decay.
Mire Lee: Select Awards
- Special Prize, Future Generation Art Prize, Victor Pinchuk Foundation (2021)
- Pontopreis MMK (2022)
- Gold Art Prize, Gold House (2023)
Mire Lee: Select Exhibitions
Select Solo Exhibitions
- Mire Lee: Openings, Antenna Space, Shanghai (2026)
- Faces, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles (2025)
- Open Wound, Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London (2024)
- Black Sun, New Museum, New York City (2023)
- Carriers, Tina Kim Gallery, New York City (2022)
- As We Lay Dying, Kunstmuseum Den Haag (2022)
- Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love, MMK Museum, Frankfurt (2022)
- Carriers, Art Sonje Centre, Seoul (2020)
- Het is of de stenen spreken (It is as if the stones are speaking), Casco Art Institute, Utrecht (2019)
- War is Won by Sentiment Not by Soldiers, Insa Art Space, Seoul (2014)
Select Group Exhibitions
- 10 Years LA!, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles (2026)
- The Parks of Aomame, Okayama Art Summit (2025)
- to ignite our skin, Sculpture Centre, Long Island City (2025)
- Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul (2024)
- Is it morning for you yet? 58th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2022)
- The Milk of Dreams, 59th Venice Biennale (2022)
- Surface Tension, Sharjah Art Foundation, Arts Area, Sharjah (2019)
- The art of not landing, Cake Gallery, Seoul (2016)
Further Reading
- Mire Lee’s official website
- Conversation in Ocula from 2022
- 2024 article from The Telegraph
- 2024 interview in Aesthetica
- 2024 story from the Financial Times
- 2023 feature in The New York Times
Mire Lee FAQs
Is Mire Lee into fetishes?
In her artistic practice, Mire Lee has explored vorarephilia (the fantasy of swallowing someone or being swallowed by them) and scatology (sexual obsession with excrement). In her 2022 exhibition Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love in Frankfurt, she featured footage of the Austrian porn actress Veronica Moser. Speaking to The Telegraph in 2024, she also spoke about Korean poet Kim Eon Hee, whose work talks a lot about excrement. “She’s very gore-ish, but special,” she said. “There’s a weird warmth in her work.”
Where does Mire Lee find inspiration?
Mire Lee has said that she admires Eva Hess and Rebecca Hall, and that she also draws inspiration from comics, pornography and subcultures.
What materials does Mire Lee use?
Mire Lee creates her kinetic sculptures using motors, mechanics, lubricants, liquid silicone, ceramics, materials and steel (among other materials) to create representations of the traumas that inform the how human bodies operate. Liquids drip and ooze unpredictably through her structures, and the machinery is often equally erratic. The randomness of the sounds, movements and discharges is reminiscent of the volatility of human bodies.
Ocula
Mire Lee in Ocula Magazine
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