The South Korean artist Lee Bul, a daughter of political dissidents, grew up amid dust. She recalls her early childhood in a military town as shrouded in grey. It was the modernization era during the dictatorship of Park Chung-Hee, when even trees were razed to the ground. Bul’s parents were often imprisoned. Such harsh formative memories no doubt play a role in Lee’s monstrous sculptures, cyborgs, and dystopian landscapes. In the mid-1980s, during Korea’s years of globalization, she began exploring the subjects of ideology and brutality while an art student at Seoul’s Hongik University. This exhibition surveys three decades of Lee’s eerie oeuvre. —Elena Clavarino
Arts Intel Report
Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now
Installation view of “Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now, 2026.”
When
Until Aug 9
Where
Etc
Photo: Lok Cheng. Image courtesy of M+, Hong Kong