Mire Lee Takes on Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall 2024

Mire Lee b. 1988, South Korea Follow +

Every year, the Hyundai Commission, a long-time partnership between Tate and Hyundai, selects an artist to create work for Tate’s Turbine Hall, a vast industrial space of 3400 square metres that once housed the power station’s electricity generators.

Most recently the Hall was given over to El Anatsui‘s Behind the Red Moon, a monumental sculptural installation woven from thousands of repurposed bottle tops and fragments, reflecting on the migration of goods and people during the transatlantic slave trade.

The exhibition attracts millions of visitors yearly. Previous iterations have included Ai Weiwei‘s Sunflower Seeds (2010), and Olafur Eliasson‘s The weather project (2003).

This year, the selection committee chose Lee to fill the space, recognising her for her visceral sculptures that use kinetic, mechanised elements to invoke the tension between soft forms and rigid systems. In 2022, the artist was the subject of a major show at New Museum in New York, and also at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. In 2021, she showed at Schinkel Pavillon in Berli.

Often taking the appearance of suspended entrails, bulging, dripping, and oozing motor liquids, Lee’s work seeks to engage the senses and create spaces to reflect on themes of emotion and human desire. ‘My oldest fixation is a fear of death,’ Lee told Ocula Magazine in 2022. ‘For a long time, I was terrified by the thought that I would stop existing, but as a fixation, it can get a bit much, so I decided to approach that fear and deal with it through art.’

’[Mire] Lee produces powerful sculptures, and we look forward to seeing how she transforms the iconic Turbine Hall with her subversive, multi-sensory forms,’ said Director of Tate Modern Karin Hindsbo.

Lee’s work has been shown at the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, the 2022 Busan Biennale, and the 2022 Venice Biennale. She is represented by Tina Kim Gallery and Antenna Space, Shanghai. Her upcoming project for the Turbine Hall will be on view from 8 October 2024 to 16 March 2025. —[O]

Main image: Exhibition view: Mire Lee, Carriers, Tina Kim Gallery, New York (15 September–22 October 2022). Courtesy Tina Kim Gallery. Photo: Hyunjung Rhee.