Yeesookyung (b. 1963) has worked across a diverse range of mediums, including painting, installation, sculpture, performance, video, and drawing, all of which encapsulate historical and cultural contexts. She has established her own world of art while exploring the themes of the fundamental questions we have such as the past and present; life and death; reality and unreality; secular or sacred things; individuals and others; society and systems, and cultures of different countries.
 
Through her work, the artist has translated the fundamental differences that have existed throughout human history across various mediums, creating a broad spectrum of expression. Additionally, she has engaged with audiences by presenting works that emphasize the curing and regenerative functions of art.

In the early 1990s, Yee primarily created works employing post-modern methodologies such as kitsch, ready-made, and pastiche, critiquing the purity, originality, and self-referentiality of modernism. She also explored works that subverted the conventional norms produced by mass media and social institutions by appropriating or altering mass-produced goods and media images.
 
In her 2000 performance work, Artist Uniform 2000, she experimented with individual behavior within social institutions using deconstructed and reassembled ready-made uniforms such as police and medical attire. She disassembled six types of Korean uniforms and categorized their parts by sleeve, pant shape, fabric type, and color. She then surveyed around 200 artists to select parts that they felt would best suit Artist Uniform 2000. As a result, 70 unique uniforms were created, and 70 individuals wearing these uniforms attended an exhibition opening, performing behaviors they deemed most fitting for their chosen uniforms.

Around 2004, while undergoing psychological counseling, Yeesookyung learned about the “mandala art therapy” technique, which involves drawing images within a circle daily. Incorporating this method into her practice, she began to create drawings as a healing process. Among these works is the ‘Flame’ series (2005–), in which the artist, much like Buddhist monks who focus intensely until reaching enlightenment, continually asked herself the single question, “What is a flame?”
 
Using cinnabar—a commonly used material in Korea, Japan, and China, mainly for talisman or Buddhist paintings—she meticulously painted repetitive patterns on hanji (traditional Korean paper) at the same time each day, treating the process as a meditative ritual. Yee described how, in creating the ‘Flame’ series, she experienced moments where her brush seemed to move automatically, producing images that appeared as if they were drawn independently of her conscious control.

In 2012, she selected parts of her ‘Flame’ drawings and, using digital software, mirrored these images to create symmetrical compositions. These digitally manipulated images were then used to produce the ‘Flame Variation’ series, following the strict methods of creating Buddhist altar paintings.

In 2014, after experiencing past life regression through hypnotherapy, the artist began exploring the themes of reincarnation and past lives—key concepts in East Asian philosophy—through her personal experiences in her ‘Past Life Regression Painting’ series (2014–). This series can be seen as a journey into the artist's unconscious and a time travel into her past.
 
The theme of "travel," which traverses the realms of reality and unreality, as well as the present and the past, has been present in Lee’s work since her 1997 children's book, 「Story of MunKil (long journey) 」. A common thread in her works involving travel is the process of the subject encountering others along the journey, leading to a new self-awareness, inner healing, and personal growth.

Yeesookyung’s notable series, ‘Translated Vase’, began with her work Translated Vases Albisola (2001), created for the Albisola Biennale in Italy. She invited a local ceramicist from Albisola—renowned for its ceramic tradition—to read poems about Joseon Baekja, traditional Korean white porcelain, and craft 12 vases in the style of 18th-century Korean white porcelains based on the images that came to mind. Through this process, the Korean white porcelain was newly "translated" by the Italian ceramicist.
 
Later, Yee personally visited the studios of master potters, collecting discarded and broken ceramic fragments. She meticulously pieced these shards together, gilding the cracks to transform them into new ceramic sculptures. These fragments, sourced from various eras and regions of Korea, including North Korean ceramics, were intertwined into a single new form, merging the diverse contexts embedded within them.

Through her unique translation process, Yee breathes new narratives into discarded ceramic fragments, crafting them into infinitely expansive forms that are no longer fragile. For instance, Nine Dragons in Wonderland, inspired by the Chinese myth of the nine sons of the dragon—a creature revered in Korean culture—reinterprets the dragon's symbolic power by crafting it from ceramic shards, thus reconnecting the severed links between past and present.

Yeesookyung has continually presented art that embodies tradition and modernity, along with Eastern identity, while conveying themes of “cure” and “regeneration.” Following her ‘Translated Vase’ series, which involved connecting ceramic fragments to create new forms, she introduced the ‘Moonlight Crowns’ series (2017–), where various craft materials were reborn into vertical crown-like structures.
 
Inspired by the forms of the Silla golden crown and the Baekje gilt-bronze incense burner, Yee reimagined the crown—a symbol of power—by placing it as a base rather than on top of the head, and stacking various fragments like a tower. The pieces that make up the ‘Moonlight Crowns’, including iron, brass, glass, pearl, mother-of-pearl, gemstones, and mirror fragments, are adorned with patterns and figures like angels, praying hands, crosses, dragons, plants, cartoon characters, and magic wands, reflecting diverse symbols.
 
Just as the different broken pieces in the ‘Translated Vase’ series were joined to form new shapes and beings, the ‘Moonlight Crowns’ series also gathers fragmented materials and symbols that stray from their original mythological and religious contexts, giving rise to new entities.

Yee's work is not only about reassembling fragile fragments into new, complete forms but also about healing her own inner self through repetitive creation and sharing that experience with others.

“I often found myself overwhelmed with indescribable joy while working. To preserve that feeling, I want to immerse myself in the process as if falling deeply in love, fully embracing my own fragility. I want to maintain an attitude and mindset that doesn’t fear being broken.” (Noblesse, Yeesookyung Interview, September 8, 2022)

Yeesookyung has held her solo exhibitions at prominent institutions both in Korea and internationally, including The Page Gallery in Seoul (2022), Massimo De Carlo Gallery in London (2020), Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (2019), Asia Society Texas Center in Houston (2015), Atelier Hermès in Seoul (2015), Daegu Art Museum in Daegu (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei in Taiwan (2015), and ARKO Art Center in Seoul (2010).
 
Yee has also participated in numerous major international exhibitions, including those at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in UK (2019), Casa Cavazzini in Udine, Italy (2018), the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), and Maraya Art Center in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2015), among others.
 
Yeesookyung’s works are in the permanent collections of National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in USA, Museum of Fine Arts Boston in USA, IFEMA ARCO Collection in Madrid, Echigo-Tsumari City Collection in Japan, British Museum in London, and Spencer Museum of Art at University of Kansas in USA, M+ Museum in Hong Kong, among others.

References

• 가나아트, 이수경 (Gana Art, Yeesookyung 
• 올해의 작가상, 이수경 (Korea Artist Prize, Yeesookyung) 
• 국립현대미술관, 백자에서 시작된 여정, 이수경 ‹번역된 도자기› 
• 이수경, Yeesookyung (Artist Website)
• 아트선재센터, 이수경: 달빛 왕관 (Art Sonje Center, Yeesookyung, Moonlight Crowns)
• 노블레스, 사랑하는 만큼, 신뢰하는 만큼. 작가 이수경