dispel

Yein Lee explores the interconnections between the human body and urban infrastructures, examining how they intertwine, merge, and transform each other.

Through the accumulation and assemblage of materials, she revives the memory of abandoned objects, questioning the imprints of time and the ambivalence of urban structures. Often relegated to the background, urban infrastructure here becomes a central motif. Her sculptures—entanglements of wires and mechanical structures— evoke the underground networks that support our cities while taking on the appearance of a hybrid, almost cyborg-like organism. The human form emerges in the modeling of her shapes: a fragment of a face, a sketched hand, infusing an organic presence into these assemblages. Drawing from sci-fi and cybernetic imagery, Lee explores the fusion of flesh and technology, thereby questioning the boundaries between the living and the artificial.

“For this exhibition, dispel, I attempt to elaborate on the conceptual framework, delving into the intricately linked two elements—infrastructure as body and body as infrastructure. To me, it is rather important that one is not just another. Together with it, a poetic approach to the form of assemblage was also something important to me.”

Lee’s works are born from her observation of space and the accumulation of objects marked by wear and tear: used teabags, electrical cables, broken electronic fragments, strands of hair… These materials—sometimes mechanical, sometimes human—are salvaged and layered into organic compositions, becoming witnesses to fragmented narratives directly drawn from the urban landscape. Dust, discoloration, and tears— traces of the passage of time—transform these objects into poetic remnants of both collective and individual memory.

Performance plays a key role in the artist’s practice. The performer, clad in cables and metallic wires, moves slowly through space, revealing the hidden infrastructures of our daily lives. Their body itself becomes an extension of these invisible networks, making tangible the interconnection between the physical and the technological. Through these ritualized gestures, the exhibition space is transformed into a shifting territory, where the boundaries between spectator and artwork blur.

Between fascination and unease, attraction and repulsion, humor and cynicism, Yein Lee reinvents our everyday environment, questioning our relationship to it and the traces we leave behind. The artist invites us to perceive urban infrastructures not only as a physical framework but, above all, as an extension of our body and memory—fluid and in constant transformation.

Yein Lee (born in 1988, Incheon, South Korea) lives and works in Vienna. After receiving a B.F.A. in Traditional Asian Painting from Hongik University, Lee obtained a Magister from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Her work has recently been presented at the 15th Gwangju Biennale (KR); Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin (DE); Belvedere 21, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna (AT); Centre d’Art La Meute, Château - Centre d’Art Contemporain de la Ville d’Aubenas, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (FR); Exhibit Museum, Vienna (AT); Palazzo San Giuseppe, Polignano a Mare (IT), among others.