Recent projects use my experience of motherhood since 2023 as a lens to recover devalued histories and goddess-centered mythologies. The human civilization’s foundations lie not in conquest or competition, but in the fundamental exchanges between mother and child—spaces where knowledge transmits through care, love, and embodied connection. My matrifocal/matrilineal societies research proves that these mother-centered societies maintained profound relationships with the natural world, offering crucial models for resisting the patriarchal domination and objectification of women, land, and Indigenous peoples. Based on what I am learning through this theoretical research, I am developing a body of work that focuses on reviving the symbols and imagining social structures rooted in care, reciprocity, and embodied connection—offering pathways toward new modes of feeling, and connecting with other living beings.
Young Joo Lee is an artist from South Korea, currently living and working in Paris. Lee’s work has been shown internationally at festivals, institutions and galleries: Seoul Museum of Art, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Alternative Space LOOP (Seoul, KR), The Drawing Center (NYC), SIGGRAPH, Cairo Video Festival (Cairo, Egypt), GLAS animation festival (LA, US), Immigrant Artist Biennial (NYC), Curitiba Biennial (Curitiba, BR), etc. Lee was a resident artist at places such as Cité internationale des arts Paris, Macdowell, The Music Center LA, Sanskriti Foundation, and Incheon Art Platform.
Lee currently is a doctoral candidate at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Lee was an Assistant professor at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University (-Spring 2024), Visiting lecturer at Harvard University (2020-Spring 2023), a College Fellow in Media Practice at Harvard University (2018-20), a recipient of Fulbright Scholarship in Film & Digital Media (2015-18), and DAAD artist scholarship (2010-12). Lee holds an MFA in Sculpture at Yale University (2017) and an MFA in Film at the Academy of Fine Arts Städelschule Frankfurt (2013).
Full CV [PDF]
Represented by OCHI Gallery
For any inquiries, please contact the gallery at GALLERY@OCHIGALLERY.COM
Young Joo Lee © Adagp Paris, 2026