Kyunghwa Lee
Kyunghwa Lee(Korean: 이경화) is a visual artist exploring the experimental nature of the modern arts from the perspectives of architecture, fashion, and philosophy.
Early life and career
Kyunghwa Lee was born in Seoul in 1968. She lived in Seoul and Japan during her early life. Influenced by the eastern Asian traditional cultures, she became to have a deep interest in combining food, clothing and shelter which are basic necessities of life to the arts. She has studied fashion design at Ehwa Women’s University located in Seoul and at Parsons School of Design located in New York City. After studying fashion design, she still had a desire for knowing the philosophical origin of visual representation and finally she found architecture as her next field of study. She studied architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. With the deep interest in the eastern and the western philosophies, she is actively showing her works which are harmonizing philosophy, fashion, and architecture to the public through the installation performance art at prestigious exhibition galleries. Currently, she resides in Los Angeles in the United States. She also provides art, design, architecture consultations to the domestic and international firms and organizations. Also she is an International Director at the Korean Society of Art Theories.
Works
Kyunghwa Lee’s experimentations to reveal the moment when the arts meet the philosophy have been continued since the opening ceremony of "The Zizek/Badiou Event of Philosophy 2013". She intends to open a new method of contemplation towards the life and the worlds through her concentration at the space created by the assistance of the technological improvement. Her works reflect the contemporary art trends by involving various genres not limited to the fine arts in order to show her philosophy. Harmonization between fashion design, which is developed from the human body structure, and architecture, which is achieved from structural considerations, enables the audience to experience the originality and experimentations of the modern arts.
Malleable Bodies: Flusser, Foucault, Plasticity, and the Corset
"Malleable Bodies: Flusser, Foucault, Plasticity, and the Corset" is an installation performing art propounding the introspection about the nature of human being in the theme of the structure of human body with architectural, fashion and philosophical approaches. The audiences experience the body making process which is to create the ideal body of own by walking through the huge ‘black box’ installed at the hall in 3D printed ‘corset’ of own body. Performance by 6 performers and installation ask the audience to experience the ‘new space’ which combines the real world and the virtual world. The space where the real world and virtual world co-exists and where the unseen presentation becomes physical reality is shown. The audiences are the part of the performing arts and also the subjects who drives the author’s intention to the completion. At the end of the performance, the audiences who achieved the ideal body of own receives the questions asking 'who are you?' This frequently asked question in various genres in history sounds fresh at this moment because the performance leads the audience to think about the origin of their existence after they achieved the ideally designed physical body.
The audiences experience the human body as an allegory of the combination of design and plan. The movement of performers becomes the image which visualize the modern way of thinking towards the reality. However, the imaged body is re-created through the 3D-printing and the new body becomes wearable. The audiences experience the malleable think by located at the center of the installation performing art. Also, the audiences will be asked to discard the limit of human abilities which represents the world by directly experiencing the process of combining the real and imagined dimensions.
| #1 | stage1 | Monochromatic informative shadow |
| #2 | Transition | Projected reality |
| #3 | stage2 | Reality designed through an artistic process disciplined body |
| #4 | Transition | Digital body process |
| #5 | stage3 | Ex nihilo and no space |
| #6 | Philosopher interview video | - |
The Zizek/Badiou Event of Philosophy 2013
Transition In-Between: Performance Art: Opening Ceremony for the Event
The traditional Korean wedding ceremony signifies the union of the yin and the yang. We think of the earth as yin and the heavens as yang. Sunset occurs at the point where the heavens and the earth meet. For that reason, Korean wedding ceremonies traditionally occur at the sunset hour. The red hues of twilight dominate. This art performance was inspired by the desire to question our current wedding culture, which has been highly distorted and lost its original meaning as people follow the tradition merely because it is what everyone does.
This work, which is a reenactment of the artist’s own wedding ceremony, interprets the traditional meanings of the wedding ceremony into a modern context. The performer playing the bride makes her appearance in a high-ceilinged gallery, which signifies the traditional authority of churches, wearing a red gown and an exaggerated 50-meter long bridal veil, which integrates Eastern and Western wedding tradition.
In this performance, the bride and the groom enter the performance stage at the same time on an equal basis and follow a line of candles prepared with the help of the audience to the small central stage where they perform the wedding ceremony. After the ceremony, the removal of the bride’s veil and the departure of the performers from the gallery challenge our society’s taboos about weddings and marriage. The performers leave behind the existing restrictions and seek a new liberated future outside the gallery space.
Flexile Panoptiosis: Mirror box: Installation Art
A "Hall of Mirrors" was originally built by at Versailles by Louis XIV of France, le Roi-Soleil, in order to showcase the authority of France. This artwork is a new hall of mirrors. In a small room in the Kunsthalle, mirrors are placed on the left and right walls and on the floor and ceiling, while the front wall is a window facing the street covered with an image of the head of Queen Elizabeth I. At the base of the Queen’s portrait, a large, red ruff collar sits in front of her neck. This room of mirrors expresses the organic change inherent to ocularcentrism by using mirrors to explore the interrelationship of the viewer and the viewed.
As soon as viewers, who were provided with ruffed collars, enter the room, they are dominated by the appearance of an endless array of ruff collars and view themselves through the endless reflected images. The small room is transformed into an endless world, while a viewer from outside the room will see a distorted shadow through the window. The interior of the room is a completely new world, but the luxurious world of the mirror room is simply flat shadows and reflections if viewed from the outside.
In this space, viewers discover that they are slaves to subconscious desires that are not filtered through their perceptions. Rather than responding to the image of the Queen and the endless repetition of images with the awe and deference typical of art galleries, viewers played around with the mirror room, lying on the floor, making funny faces, and laughing at the results. While the artwork projected power, viewers were able to free themselves from the power of images.
Urban Facade: Integration of Fashion and Architecture: Projection Mapping
Two recordings of "flexile panoptiosis" is projected onto the façade of the Kunsthalle. The first recording shows what the live audience saw during the on-stage performance: the shadows of performers through a lace curtain. The second recording provides an overhead view of the same performance. The performance starts with a queen, who is wearing items of fashion that visually symbolize her authority, including a ruffed collar and an elaborate gown, moving across the stage trailed by a procession of followers. All the performers wear the architectural elements of form, structure, material, plan, and section as fashion items. At the beginning of the performance, the performers fashionable accoutrements visually project power to the audience. But as the performance proceeds, the performers progressively deconstruct the elements of power. At the end of the performance, even the audience joins in, going on stage and turning the elements of power into toys.
Human experience begins with the relationship between the act of viewing and the viewed object. When I view an object, I perceive it and form a relationship with it. The important aspect in this artwork is the relationship. We live within the restrictions that are born from the relationships between external objects that we encounter through sight and ourselves. This artwork symbolically illustrates the desire and awe that we have for objects we see.
A good example of the relationship and restrictions in the area of fashion is the ruff collar and cuffs that were popular amongst the nobles and royalty of 16th and 17th century Europe to project their status and power. In architecture, a good example is the Panopticon, created by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century to efficiently control people through the usage of space, and which visually looks striking like a ruff. Through this work, I have integrated fashion and architecture in order to explore the interrelationships between the viewer and the viewed.
Education
- Harvard university Graduate School of Design, MArch, Architecture
- Ewha womans university Art School, BFA, Fashion Design
Exhibitions
- 2015 Malleable Bodies[1]
- 2014 Body Metamorphing[2]
- 2013 금기 [3]
- 2013 The Zizek/Badiou Event of Philosophy 2013[4]
- Flexible Panoptiosis
- Transition in Between
- Urban Facade
- 2012 Flexible Panoptiosis solo exhibition[5]
References
External links
- Malleable Bodies, MMCA
- 세계일보 Malleable Bodies 인체튜닝시대에 선 자아
- 예술블로그 '미술관 가는 남자' Malleable Bodies 작가인터뷰
- 중앙일보 Malleable Bodies
- 뉴시스 Malleable Bodies 이상적 인체 갈구하는 현대인 표현한 '멜리어블 바디'
- 경향신문 Body Metamorphing 패션디자이너 겸 건축가 이경화씨 "성형·명품대국 한국… 몸·삶의 철학이 없다"
- theAsiaN 이경화 개인전 Body Metamorphing
- 멈춰라, 생각하라!(The Zizek/Badiou Event of Philosophy–The Idea of Communism 2013)
- 이경화 작가 작품소개
- theAsiaN <금기> 공연리뷰