Carrier Bags of Power
Solo exhibition at Cité internationale des arts Paris – Vitrine. Jan 21 – Feb 21, 2026
“The works in Carrier Bags of Power1 were made after my daughter’s birth. Pregnancy and childbirth made me aware that each of us is shaped by a lineage: our mothers – their bodies, love, endurance, and struggles. Women’s bodies are carrier bags: vessels of life, memory, and care, not instruments of conquest.
Becoming a mother made me long for a different social order, one in which care is not private labor or moral virtue, but a principle of power. To move toward that possibility, I began dismantling the symbolism of spiritual and temporal authority: hierarchies embedded in religion, creation stories, and today’s politics, where a single figure stands above other living beings.
From there, I turned to societies organized differently from patriarchal models. Matrilineal and matrifocal communities have endured despite globalization, often a process of patriarchalization. They offer living examples of alternative structures: environmentally sustainable, gender-equal, and community- based, where women, children, and elders are valued.
Through these works, I propose a foundation for reimagining who holds power, and for building structures capable of sustaining a world organized around care.”
– Young Joo Lee
1 In reference to Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986
Cité internationale des arts © Maurine Tric / Adagp Paris, 2026