Known for a pioneering interdisciplinary approach honed over the course of four decades, Lee Bul has created a body of work spanning sculpture, installation, performance, and painting. She first gained international recognition in the 1990s for a provocative, genre-defying art that interrogates themes of utopian ideals, technological transformation, and the fragility of human ambition. For early performances and soft sculptures that challenged societal norms, she often incorporated cyborg imagery to explore posthumanism and gender politics.
Over time, Lee’s practice has expanded to encompass large-scale immersive installations utilizing mirrored surfaces, organic-mechanical hybrids, and architectural structures to engage viewers in a multi-sensory experience of space and perception. Deeply influenced by philosophy, literature, and experimental architecture, her oeuvre examines the intersections of technology, history, and speculative futures. Concepts of freedom and liberation are deeply embedded in Lee’s work, both thematically and formally. Her artistic practice can be understood as an ongoing exploration of constraints—whether political, societal, or artistic—and an imperative to transcend them.
Lee Bul (b. 1964, Yeongju) lives and works in Seoul, South Korea. Having graduated from Seoul’s Hongik University with a BFA in sculpture, she made early breakthroughs to create multi-faceted, provocative works that crossed genres and disciplines exploring themes of beauty, corruption, and decay. Some of Lee’s now-iconic works from this period were considered integral in the emergence of a global contemporary art of the 1990s, as advocated by supporters of her work, influential curators including Harald Szeemann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Okwui Enwezor. Lee’s ‘Majestic Splendor’ (1997), an installation featuring decomposing fish adorned with sequins that was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, was selected by Szeemann for his Venice Art Biennale exhibition in 1999, ‘dAPERTutto’. The same year, her karaoke installation ‘Gravity Greater Than Velocity I, II’ (1999) and ‘Amateurs’ (1999), featured in the Korean national pavilion and she received honorable mentions for both projects.
Lee continued to examine the body’s relationship to technology during the early 2000s creating sculptural hybrids of machine and organic forms. Her Cyborgs and Anagrams series explored our fascination and anxieties surrounding the techno-utopian ideal of perfectibility; while recalling the mutable, extracorporeal soft sculptures she created for her early performances.
Since then, Lee’s work has increasingly explored the enduring themes of utopian modernity and the rise and fall of progressivist projects, influenced by her own experience as the daughter of political dissidents during Korea’s turbulent social and political transformation. Following an artistic residency in New Zealand in 2005, Lee embarked on a series of sculptures and related works on paper and canvas furthering her artistic inquiry on the ruins of historical projects to build a better civilization. Lee’s current practice continues to delve into this expansive topic, reflecting on the ‘melancholic traces’ of these failed progressivist ideals.
In 2024, Lee was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to create sculptures for the niches of its landmark Fifth Avenue facade. ‘The Genesis Facade Commission: Lee Bul, Long Tail Halo’ on view from 12 September 2024 to 10 June 2025.
A major touring survey co-curated by Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, and M+, Hong Kong, opens at Leeum Museum of Art in September 2025, followed by a presentation at M+ in March 2026, before touring to other international venues.
Lee’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 Museum of Art, Seoul; Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. She is the recipient of the 9th Ruth Baumgarte Art Award (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 awarded a Menzione d’Onore (1999) for her contribution to the 48th Venice Biennale.
