The South Korean artist Mire Lee, who is predicated in Seoul and Amsterdam, makes sculptures that whirr and splutter, seemingly teetering on the sting of collapse. She makes use of industrial supplies equivalent to oil, concrete and clay—the outcomes feeling each otherworldly and deeply tied to the human physique. Certainly, it’s the physique that Lee references most explicitly in Open Wound, her fee for Tate Fashionable’s cavernous Turbine Corridor. Material sculptures, referred to as “skins”, seem en masse: first, they’re drenched in a thick, dripping liquid within the centre of the room, then moved to dry in a again space, and eventually hung, little by little, over the course of the present, all through the principle corridor. It’s an immersive, performative, piece that the curator Alvin Li says suggests the theatricality of Lee’s work could also be rising in refined and enduring methods.
Pores and skin-like items of cloth are held on chains in Lee’s Open Wound at Tate Fashionable’s Turbine Corridor © Tate/Larina Fernandes
The Artwork Newspaper: That is in some ways your most bold mission up to now. How does it really feel now you may have completed?
Mire Lee: I really feel like I’m seeing the present for the primary time now, now that I see the way it got here out. After I was putting in, I felt like I used to be within it. I used to be very immersed.
How did you strategy the method and the way has that differed from earlier works?
The method for all of my tasks is natural. There’s no actual, thought-through construction. The one factor that could be very totally different right here is I usually work actually hands-on with all the pieces, each course of. For this it was simply bodily unimaginable. There are such a lot of corners that I couldn’t get my very own arms on—and due to security, legal responsibility and so forth, there are numerous components that I couldn’t do myself. However in the long run, I believe I’ve managed to do it very DIY, with these wonderful fabricators. It’s the primary time I’ve labored with fabricators on this method.
You might have created a liquid that’s paying homage to sauces and different issues that really feel midway between solidity and liquidity. What pursuits you about attaining that precise form of texture?
Firstly, it was a technical necessity—we wanted one thing that dries comparatively rapidly. It was a brand new recipe. I additionally love the materiality of it.
One factor that instantly strikes me once I see your work, together with Open Wound, is there’s a vulnerability—it seems like all the pieces may crumble at any second—however on the similar time there’s some very advanced engineering happening. How do you stability these two issues?
I don’t actually stability it. It shouldn’t crumble however I like some issues falling aside. Typically I get it improper, generally I get it proper, and that’s one thing I’ve discovered to get pleasure from. It doesn’t make me comfortable— as a result of at first I would like issues to go effectively—however I’ve began enjoying lots with the potential technical failures of each mission.
Was the technical coaching one thing you may have learnt on the job?
I don’t see myself as somebody who has curiosity in expertise. It’s extra like an impulse or obsession of eager to do one thing wild or new. I took a really technical course, conventional sculpture, which I additionally actually loved. I actually love sculpture as a medium, as a result of it’s very robust, like silly robust, and it’s very near your physique. And I actually just like the labour in it. However I suppose I received into kinetics as a result of it allowed me to make issues that I didn’t have full management over.
As a part of the work, new “skins” are created from a thick liquid, then draped over racks to dry © Tate/Oliver Cowling and Lucy Inexperienced
How did you discover working with the vastness of the Turbine Corridor?
I believe I’m fairly good with scale. Usually, I’ve a sense that the work is the way it’s going to really feel when it’s positioned in a sure quantity and peak. With this area, I wasn’t so assured. It was a bit more durable.
What’s it about manufacturing unit areas that you simply discover attention-grabbing?
The collectiveness of human labour, the anonymity of staff, human goals.
There’s something very resonant a couple of spluttering, whirring mess in the midst of one of many UK’s largest vacationer points of interest, on the precarious second we’re in. How a lot are you fascinated with the worldwide context when you’re making a piece like this?
I strive actually exhausting to keep away from didactic approaches. So there is no such thing as a acutely aware puzzling or contextualising occurring once I conceive of my work. However there’s me who is part of a collective going via the identical time as different folks. And that particular person is being, in fact, vastly affected by it. I nearly really feel just like the accountability is extra for myself to really feel all the pieces sharply and overtly. I believe that makes the work resonate.
You might have beforehand talked in regards to the “unsayable”: this concept that your machines are consultant to an extent of one thing that can’t be stated. Do you suppose that’s essential right here, to supply a second of quiet contemplation in a public area?
Sure, I believe there’s something that intensifies or deepens if you lower the channel of language. Like if you wish to really feel one thing actually deep, you shut your eyes. So yeah, I significantly like that high quality of a machine or the kinetic medium.
Open Wound stands out out of your earlier works in that it entails human actors—technicians who will take the soaked “skins” down and transfer them throughout the corridor to the drying space whereas guests are current. The result’s one thing that feels near a efficiency, or that actually has a way of the theatrical. Is that this a course you might be consciously taking together with your observe? Ought to we anticipate to see extra of it in your work?
My work has at all times concerned an enormous quantity of labour and upkeep, besides that this was at all times stored within the background. For this mission, primarily based on dialogue with the curator Alvin, we determined to carry it to the entrance of stage, to focus on, as you stated, this theatrical dimension. However I ought to flag that each one the upkeep work truly serves a operate and isn’t exaggerated, purposeless efficiency. It’s about highlighting the processual, durational facet of my work.
The work will change over time, with extra of the skins showing. What impact do you hope to attain with the work’s durational facet?
I would like the items to fill the area, but additionally disappear into it. For me, [the skins] makes me take a look at each nook of the constructing, and on the crane [in the hall], and so forth. I would like that feeling to be refined. I believe refined emotions are extra bodily generally.
• Mire Lee: Open Wound, Tate Fashionable, London, till 16 March 2025
