My practice reflects my lived experience and its personal, political, social, and historical dimensions. It is intentionally heterogeneous, evolving organically with time, place, and the materials at hand.
I investigate the shifting notions of “the self,” “the other,” and “otherness” as they surface in history, literature, scientific research, popular media, and my own cross-cultural life. Working across animation, performance, drawing, sculpture, and digital media, I translate these inquiries into tangible forms. Growing up in South Korea—a country shaped by the legacies of colonialism and the Cold War—I encountered “the other” as both a historical force and a personal reality. Later, as a foreigner in multiple countries, I confronted racial discrimination, structural inequities, and the ideologies that govern how unfamiliar identities are perceived. My experiences as both woman and artist have sharpened my sensitivity to narratives that are silenced or overlooked.
Through research and lived experience, I weave personal stories into collective ones, constructing fictional worlds that question and distort the status quo. Drawing on science fiction, mythology, and pop culture, I explore both the darkest imaginings and the hopeful projections that challenge patriarchal modernity. I am drawn to the tension between seemingly opposite yet complementary forces: yin and yang, tragedy and comedy, good and evil, laughter and grief. To truly encounter “the other,” I believe one must move fluidly between such contradictions, shifting perspective again and again.
My recent projects reframe my own experience of becoming a mother as a way to recognize and reinterpret the forgotten histories and mythologies of goddesses and the societies that revered them. I propose that the foundations of human civilization begin in the exchanges between mother and child, where knowledge is transmitted through care and love. Goddess-worshipping cultures also embodied a profound respect for nature—a connection we urgently need to reclaim in order to resist the patriarchal domination and objectification of women, land, and Indigenous peoples. In my painting practice and my writing, I revive the symbols of these matriarchal traditions and imagine alternative social structures rooted in their values.
Ultimately, my work seeks to involve viewers—sensorially and intellectually—so they might experience a different way of feeling and, perhaps, come closer to feeling with “the other.”
Young Joo Lee is an artist from South Korea, currently living and working in Paris. 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), a College Fellow in Media Practice at Harvard University (2018-20), Macdowell fellow (2021), 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).
CV [PDF]
Represented by OCHI Gallery
For any inquiries, please contact the gallery at GALLERY@OCHIGALLERY.COM