LandEscape Art Review // Special Issue | Page 198

Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

Hyunji Lee

Lives and works in Phoenix, USA

M

y work is derived from the confusion and distrust about the perceptions of surrounding objects that were engendered by my physical and psychological experiences of displacement. Our perceptions are certainly limited: we see a lot of things everyday, but we sense only part of them, not their entirety. Though a figure definitely exists, we cannot discern its essence, as if we are trapped in a certain mode of viewing. The memories become distorted, and chronological order is broken. I am interested in this distinction and distortion between experience and memory and the way I perceive them in my nomadic situations.
After coming to US, I have become acutely self-conscious, almost disembodied, as if I am observing myself. The foreign environment seems to violently pierce though my body and make me feel vulnerable. As I gradually accepted my dislocation, I was able to reconstruct myself by connecting the current and past simultaneously and navigating space within the sense of displacement. My cultural dislocation becomes evident as my way of seeing changes. This work explores the visual and conceptual interventions in cognition and memory through my personal immigrant experiences and stories, including how we see our surroundings, how the images are stored within our memory, and how they change overtime.
Hyunji Lee is inspired by the distinction between experience and memory within the sense of displacement. Her works explore thoughts and emotions generated between " the experiencing self " and " the remembering self." In doing so, she links the personal history of her own and the experience of others by creating a new environment, which is the combination of the true, imagined, and imitated spaces. She strives to evoke the interaction between personal memories and the desire to link personal elements into a shared human experience.
Hyunji Lee
Hyunji Lee earned her MFA from Pennsylvania State University and her BFA from Korea University. She has participated in various exhibitions internationally, including the United States, Belgium, and South Korea. She was a recipient of the 31th Joong-Ang Fine Arts Prize at the Joong-Ang Culture Media Co. and the Song- Eun Art Award at the Song-Eun Arts and Cultural Foundation in 2009 and a nominee for the Dedalus Art Grant in 2012. She was selected to participate in the New York Foundation for the Arts mentoring program for immigrant artists in 2013 and was awarded the NYF A Van Lier Felloweship. In 2014, she was a recipient of the Contemporary Forum Emerging Artist Grant at the Phoenix Art Museum.