Fi Jae Lee

Art can depict space embedded in memory(time) and it can depict the future of a place or a person(time). I want to transport the time of my works to before I was born and to the distant future after I die. Since I work in the tradition of Korean Buddhist mural paintings and sculpt with synthetic clay, I think of my practice not as being in the present time, but as being in both the distant past and future. My works represent a faraway world that can be built only through imagination. Imagine! A festival the day before I was born. A woman dancing joyfully in the midst of the festivities, or the days of Melancholy, who eats me alive at the bottom of the ocean. I’ve been trying to depict myself creating time, while disappearing into it. Time in my work is multi-leveled and multi-layered. 

I make the invisible visible. I paint what appears to be absent because it is invisible to the naked eye. I paint absence in order to paint presence.

Fi Jae Lee is a visual artist working in drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. Since 2008, Lee has maintained a practice in traditional Buddhist painting techniques that she integrates with contemporary forms. She works with materials as varied as reinforced plastic and gold pigment, creating intricate shrines that honor "parasitic bodies"—extinct forms, imagined future beings, and sensory constructs—that coexist within her own body.  

Lee’s solo exhibition Excavating Future Species at Artspace3, Seoul, South Korea (2023) consisted of a series of sculptures, paintings, and drawings depicting uncanny, grotesque creatures that evoke early lifeforms of unknown origin and ancient artifacts. The presentation also included Food Reincarnation, a relational aesthetic performance that took place at an extended dining table set with plates, utensils, glasses, and Lee’s sculptures displayed on tiered cake stands and in bell jars. In this performance, Lee staged a guided dining experience through which she encouraged participants to reflect on how the human act of consumption—feeding on the death of other creatures—ultimately gives rise to new forms. 

Lee’s solo exhibitions include The Festival a Day before I was Born, Corner Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2022); Phanerozoic Eon, Cenozoic Era, Leeficene, Avenuel Arthall Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2019); and The Return of the Airship Fi-5, Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea (2016). She has participated in artist residency programs at The Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai, China (2024); BilbaoArte, Fundación BilbaoArte Fundazioa, Bilbao, Spain (2017); SeMA Nanji Residency, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2014); and the MMCA Residency Goyang, administered by the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, South Korea (2011).

In 2023, Lee was awarded a Grant for Artist Management from the Korea Arts Management Service and the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, which came with an invitation to participate in a group exhibition DIALOGUE: Mind Map, Plantlance Seongsu, Seoul, South Korea. She has also received a Seoul Foundation for the Arts and Culture Grant (2018) and an ARKO Young Art Frontier Grant from Arts Council Korea (2009). Lee’s work is in the permanent collections of National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea and the Seoul Museum of Art.

Lee holds an M.F.A. and B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.