LEE: The occasion that first led me to pay close attention to the artist Lee Wan was the 2010 television program 《SBS Special Documentary – Media Art, Flying Through the World of Imagination》.

The documentary introduced Lee Wan as a new-generation artist, but what particularly caught my attention at the time were the images evoking beginnings and endings, creation and extinction, and death, as seen in the video work I Will Become a Flower and Be with You in the Next Life (2009).

In 2010, I was able to meet the artist in person and hear him speak about his work. This took place at the Changdong Residency of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. It was there that I came to understand that the themes running throughout Lee Wan’s practice were systems and irresistible forces beyond human control.

After reading an article in 2013 about the exhibition 《Lee Wan: Oh, Pure Love》 at the Daegu Art Museum, I contacted him again, and that connection has continued to the present.

The theme of “systems,” which Lee Wan treats as central to his work, seems directly linked to a postmodern worldview that critically reexamines the entirety of human civilization — including social orders, norms, traditions, and taboos — all of which are believed to have been constructed upon rational reason.

Although the expression may sound somewhat clichéd, it still seems the most appropriate description. I believe this is the primary reason why figures within the art world have continued to pay attention to Lee Wan as an artist, regardless of individual taste or preference.

LW: I think that may be because many people — especially those working in theory — discover narratives or codes within my work that appeal to them. They seem to believe that my work simultaneously contains points of connection to art history as well as points that distinguish it from those traditions.

From a formal perspective, many people say that the process through which I discover objects, project messages onto them, and generate meaning through dismantling or recombination possesses a structural and three-dimensional quality. When focusing on the theme of systems, viewers often read various social messages into the works. I am frequently told that I am an artist whose works contain many things to “unpack.”


LEE: Most of your works leave room for interpretation through connections to postmodern discourse, from form to content. Because of this, one can endlessly draw stories out of the works. Another strength is that they coincide with the very points toward which contemporary society directs its attention and questions.

Since your work deals with systems, it naturally addresses socio-political issues, yet most of the works maintain a certain distance from these problems rather than confronting them directly, allowing thoughts to unfold in multiple directions. While you describe this as presenting material for reflection through maintaining distance, it can also be understood as a form of speaking out and participating socially as an artist.

LW: Since childhood, I think I enjoyed speculating about why the world exists. From a very young age, I constantly wondered things like, “Why was I born? Why does this world exist? Why am I myself?” I was deeply interested in the fate of human existence. As a child, I used to draw lines with a ruler and correspond them to calendars.

“1 centimeter equals 1 year, 30 centimeters equals 30 years, 1 millimeter equals 1 month” — I established systems like this, looked through magnifying glasses, and tried to find answers to questions such as, “Why can human beings only live this long?”

Sometimes I would look at my mother and think, “Why do I call this person ‘mother’? Could I not call someone else ‘mother’? Is she my mother simply because she gave birth to me? Everyone is born by someone — couldn’t I call another person who gave birth to someone else ‘mother’ as well?” As I grew older, I gradually began examining social structures.

What I would consider my first work was photographing the scenery outside my home when I was around twelve or thirteen years old. At the time, I lived on the third floor, and because there were not yet many apartment buildings, living on the third floor allowed me to see distant landscapes clearly, including mountains far away. But as apartment complexes were constructed, the mountains gradually disappeared from view.

Over the course of four or five months, I repeatedly photographed the same scene as the mountains slowly became obscured. Looking at those photographs, I found myself wondering, “Why is this happening?” Around that time, I met a friend who, for the first time, seemed to clearly explain the reasons behind all the questions I had been asking.

I no longer remember his name, but he spoke to me from a Christian perspective and told me that God had created everything. Divine creation. Hearing that explanation at the time felt as though all my questions had finally been answered. Because of this, I attended church diligently until middle school. But the longer I attended church, the more aspects arose that I could not understand through logical reasoning.

So from high school onward, for various reasons, I stopped going. During university, I became deeply immersed in Buddhism, perhaps partly because I attended a school affiliated with a Buddhist foundation. Buddhism, which does not posit the existence of an absolute god, felt more comfortable to me.

I enjoy reading books on science and philosophy as much as art books. Like many artists today, I also enjoy the process of inference. Philosophy is used when generating or revising structures of logic, while science is used when making inferences based on material reality. While reading, I often formulate theories of my own. My works proceed through newly combined and generated systems of logic produced through that process.

In particular, when incorporating social phenomena or historical perspectives into my work, I try to approach them with sharp socio-scientific analysis. If emotional tendencies, sentimental biases, or inexplicably aesthetic elements begin appearing within a work, I try to remove them. I do not make preparatory drawings for planning works. Nor have I ever organized ideas through writing. All simulations occur inside my head.

Rather than saying that I am uninterested in visuality, it would be more accurate to say that I focus on logically completing the structure of a work. If necessary, I could borrow elements from Western art history for my next work. I could paint Impressionist paintings or produce minimalist sculptures. I could make video works, photographs, or even highly popular works. In fact, I will soon publish a novel and release a film.

The media and forms I have used so far are simply tools that I have chosen. I do not want to become trapped within any particular form. I believe this is both a defining characteristic and a strength of my practice. To people who view my work according to specific criteria, the way I work may appear highly unusual. To those grounded in the traditions of Western art, I probably seem like an artist who does not care about anything at all.

People focused on form say that my work changes every time they see a new exhibition. Meanwhile, people focused on concepts tell me they appreciate the fact that I continue experimenting. Others see me as a highly rebellious artist. Some categorize me within the lineage of Minjung art. I have heard countless attempts to define me.

Because a single artist presents many different forms simultaneously, people tend to discover only what they themselves wish to see or are already familiar with. That is why I often find it very enjoyable to observe the reactions and thoughts of those encountering my work. Sometimes the fact that different lives lead different people to interpret the same work differently becomes another source of fascination that inspires future works.

LEE: Now I would like to speak more specifically about your work. You have said that this world resembles a kind of amusement park, and that after graduating from university you naturally began making amusement rides. But if this world is like an amusement park, and if we merely conform to its systems and are carried along without truly knowing where we are headed, where do you think such systems originate?

Who created the first system? And do you think systems continue to evolve through their own operation and through interactions with those who are carried along by them, or do you think they merely continue functioning endlessly in an already completed state?

LW: If one traces the origins of the causal relationships connected to systems back into the past, everything has ultimately been determined by demand. I do not know whether any absolute standard has ever existed, but throughout history there have continually been broad political decisions designed in ways advantageous to particular groups for the purposes of survival and sustaining life.

For example, imagine the process through which the political structures of primitive humanity evolved into today’s systems, or think about Korean history during the feudal monarchy period. If we examine the Joseon Dynasty according to contemporary standards, its economic growth rate and population growth rate would probably appear to be zero.

Yet because it was an era structured around kings and social hierarchies, those conditions would have been considered legitimate and necessary at the time. Later, feudalism collapsed, and an era emerged in which all people were legally equal. As capitalism became established, capitalist and laboring classes emerged, and the world was thrown into upheaval.

New structures arose in response to the demands of a transformed era. Once engines were invented and mass production became possible, producers required greater quantities of raw materials and consumers. If you look at graphs of global population growth, they almost perfectly mirror the increase in oil consumption. Western imperialism has had perhaps the greatest influence on contemporary Asia.

Because colonial experiences during the imperial era implanted admiration toward dominant powers, Asia still longs to become like the West. It is difficult to find a Korean baekban restaurant in Europe, yet Asia is full of pasta and pizza restaurants. Korea and Japan, having become the most successfully Westernized societies in Asia, became role models for other Asian nations.

The twentieth century could be described as the century of transmission speed. Everything became a competition of speed — from arrows to missiles, from telegrams to satellite communications. Competition over mobility naturally produced massive distribution markets, and the world came to require more workers, consumers, and markets.

This is why Asian countries modernized under Western influence eventually became factories for the entire world. Today, in the era of neoliberalism, competition for labor continues among Asian nations themselves. Even the ordinary act of eating a sandwich exists within this system.

We live in an age in which we freely agree to and use many things. But I often ask myself: where did my way of life actually come from? When I think about people placed in situations where they must passively respond within these strategic structures, it reminds me of people visiting an amusement park. When people go to amusement parks, they feel excitement.

But at the same time, they also feel fear. That was exactly how society felt to me. When I graduated from university and stepped into society, it felt like sitting on a ride waiting for it to begin operating. The world already existed before me, and I felt as though I had climbed onto a machine activated by that world.

Through certain chains of causality, I suddenly appeared within this world — this system — which had existed long before I was born. Can I truly escape this structure? How much choice have I ever actually possessed?

From the moment I was born, I could never precede essence itself. I am merely one living being produced through the reproduction, evolution, and survival of life since its earliest emergence in the world. My hair color, my skin color, my genetic characteristics — I had no power to choose any of them. How much will I truly be able to choose in the future?

If there had been even the slightest deviation in my parents’ meeting and decisions, I would have existed as an entirely different person. Returning again to the amusement park: from the amusement park’s perspective, it does not matter whether I enter or whether someone else does. Anyone meeting certain physical conditions can ride the attractions.

As long as someone fitting the required conditions pays money, the system functions. I think this is precisely what society is like. I pay money and receive services from a ride — from a machine structure. I feel pleasure and fear; I scream with excitement. Yet everyone riding the same attraction experiences similar sensations at the exact same points. People scream simultaneously at identical moments. I found this astonishing.

The machine structure itself creates these reactions, and yet completely different individuals all scream at the same moment. Although it appears as though I have chosen freely, at the most essential level I have already entered a preexisting structure and am simply reacting to it in the same way as everyone else. That, to me, resembles contemporary society.

If we could travel back twenty thousand years, we would probably all belong to a single family. Thinking about this, everything surrounding me now — everything that has come to me, including technology, customs, religion, and culture — has ultimately flowed outward from a single origin.


LEE: Through this conversation, I am becoming increasingly aware that your mode of expression and mine differ somewhat. Can one really make such definitive statements about the Joseon Dynasty, for example? But listening to your explanation, it seems that what you call “systems” actually encompasses at least two kinds of systems: on the one hand, systems already constructed and functioning like amusement rides that operate regardless of who enters them; and on the other hand, systems produced through inevitable chains of causality.

The former are the systems that operate society and govern our lives and behaviors, while the latter resemble the precise and singular conditions necessary for someone like Lee Wan to be born. It seems we live by conforming to both simultaneously. As you explained, although we appear to make countless choices in life, the actual range of choices available within the conditions we are given is not all that wide. I do not mean to argue for determinism, but even the fact of being born lies beyond one’s own will.

LW: Those two systems are difficult to separate. Living within the geographical condition of Korea, I inevitably have had to accept — at least to a certain degree — the political and economic systems available to me. I was born into a world that had already long existed, one in which people continually lived by sometimes conforming to those conditions and sometimes colliding against them.

The various systems of 1979 became mixed together in different ways, and from that process a person called Lee Wan emerged. Even matters of taste — saying things like “I like this” or “This tastes good to me” — are all produced within structures. My tastes, personality, manner of speaking, and even my thoughts are things learned under the influence of the environment in which I lived. In other words, I have never desired anything that I had not first learned.


LEE: Art resists systems while simultaneously being interpreted within them; it breaks taboos while still remaining socially permissible. Of course this cannot be generalized entirely, but works that transgress taboos within certain acceptable limits tend to receive positive evaluations.

We expect artists to act outside norms or traditions, yet when they stray too far beyond them, society often turns away or condemns them. Since you study systems, you must know this well. Just as Lee Wan as an artist exists within social structures, your works — as products — also exist within social systems and acquire meaning there. If art’s resistant or deviant acts were to completely detach from society, they would become meaningless utterances.

To some degree, they must remain understandable through society’s systems and manuals. Yet there is always the risk of being absorbed into systems like a black hole. How do you resolve the dilemmas or limitations that arise from navigating that boundary? Is your maintenance of ambiguity and ambivalence also related to this?

LW: In my case, those issues tend to resolve themselves naturally. My works begin and develop organically within everyday life. I do not know whether my ability to discover, understand, and analyze specific situations is simply somewhat stronger than others’, but when I encounter something, I tend to immediately sense how it might become a work through certain processes and then put that into action.

For example, the flyer in my left hand advertising “five-minute loan shark lending” and the flyer in my right hand containing aggressive political propaganda slogans were both picked up on my way to the studio today. If I were a foreigner unable to read Korean, it would probably be difficult to recognize that these two flyers — both designed with similarly aggressive red typography — actually communicate completely opposing messages.

That is an extremely interesting point to me. Even with just these two flyers, I can imagine a work expressing the world as a kind of black comedy. Of course, I would not necessarily exhibit such a work. If I were to unfold the words written in my work notes and introduce characters to explain them, it would become a novel. If I condensed those notes further, it would become poetry.

If I used the contents of the notes as a manual and walked outside carrying a video camera, it would become a documentary; if I compressed it into a single frame, it would become a photographic work. I am always focused on the core.


LEE: Nothing can ultimately be interpreted through a single meaning alone. This is equally true even of traditional artworks that aimed to convey one clear meaning. As you described, it is difficult to maintain a center while simultaneously extending in multiple directions. It sounds simple and even clichéd when expressed verbally, but sustaining a “unity within diversity” is actually extremely difficult.

When I first encountered the amusement-ride work Slide (2005), I was genuinely startled by the way it moved. Even if you had simply reproduced an ordinary playground slide, the message would still have been communicated. But by transforming it in that way, your intention to disrupt the limits of fixed meaning and provoke ambivalent modes of thought became unmistakably clear.

As an aside, I am curious whether there were any safety issues when making these amusement rides. Since they were works that viewers could actually ride or operate, did any accidents ever occur?

LW: They could certainly be dangerous. There was one case where an adult climbed too quickly and fell over, but no serious accident actually occurred. In the case of Slide, I installed a hydraulic mechanism underneath the work.


LEE: What kinds of thoughts were behind PET-Toy (2005)? Compared to your other works, it seems less widely known.

LW: After making the amusement-park works, I moved on to toy works. The idea came from children’s toys whose wings flap when pushed. I made many of them at the time, but I never formally exhibited them. Back then I also made instruments out of PET bottles and pizza boxes, as well as children’s toys. Childhood is when we first begin learning things. It is when we first learn language, numbers, and knowledge. It is also when we develop sociality.

If you look carefully, toys play an important role in helping children accept the structures of human life as they become socialized. The toys that existed during my childhood could largely be divided into two categories. One consisted of toys shaped like weapons of war, while the other consisted of toys simulating adult social roles.

As soon as children become old enough to play with toys, the very first thing they learn is how to attack other people. Of course, weapons possess the ambivalence of defense as well, so it is not simply about learning aggression alone. In any case, human beings first learn competition and victory. Otherwise, they imitate the roles of mothers, doctors, police officers, and so on.

If you examine toys containing theatrical elements, they are essentially compressed representations of the roles society considers important. When all of these toys are gathered together in one place, it feels as though they form a simplified and adorable sample model of human society itself. So I made cute toy guns, knives, spears and shields, along with instruments and objects that produce sound. It was already quite a long time ago — around the period when I was graduating from university.

LEE: Works such as ‘Book Sporting Goods’ (2006), ‘Life Is Widely Spreading Blood-Red Ripples’ (2009), and ‘Forlorn Standard’ (2010), which transform familiar objects into things detached from their original functions, brought widespread attention to Lee Wan as an artist. Works like making a baseball out of chicken meat or polishing a hammer until it functions like a mirror sharply critique the dullness of lives that simply follow predetermined systems without reflection.

Among these, the chicken-meat baseball is perhaps the most frequently discussed. A statement of yours often quoted in relation to these works is: “When we pay money to purchase something, we are agreeing to that object and everything associated with it.” In reality, we buy objects and use them according to prescribed methods. Because these behaviors are so familiar and habitual, we often fail to recognize what exactly we are agreeing to or which rules we are obeying.

In that sense, these works invite us to reconsider what kinds of things we have agreed to and conformed to through the act of purchasing and using objects. As with the amusement-ride and toy works, your sustained interest in systems is consistently visible. This attitude also seems to have formed the basis for the ‘Made In’ series (2013–present).

However, could one not interpret purchasing objects and using them according to manuals not as submission to systems, but rather as actions motivated by efficiency and practicality? Chicken meat or drinking glasses cannot realistically function as hammers. Cups have long been used for drinking water, and baskets for carrying objects.

Practical objects in particular possessed intrinsic roles transcending periods and regions long before modern social systems were fully established. They were designed and used according to purpose over long periods of accumulated experience and learning. In that sense, manuals may simply be compilations of the most effective methods discovered over time. It seems necessary to further differentiate the meaning of manuals.

LW: I can answer that in two ways. First, every form of existence is fundamentally selfish. Plants and animals alike move in order to preserve their own lives. In order to perpetuate existence, they even eliminate what is unnecessary without hesitation. I believe systems contain the same characteristic. Within the process through which things are produced, the foremost concern is always: “How can this be made more cheaply, more quickly, and with higher quality?”

From the consumer’s perspective, that process is extremely convenient and beneficial. But if one traces the process backward, there is a high probability that negative elements are operating beneath the rationality and efficiency generated by the system. For example, children in Africa who manufacture soccer balls may never themselves own a soccer ball.

Of course, ordinary consumers do not see those negative elements. Yet when prices become cheaper for consumer convenience, it means someone else is receiving lower wages. From the producer’s perspective, reducing labor costs may be rational for lowering production costs, but it simultaneously creates other problems.

The baseball made of chicken meat emerged because, although I partially agree with the system in which I live, I do not agree with the other problems generated by its efficiency. The work was an attempt to produce a result outside the data generally expected by the system.

Why a baseball? Baseball is one of the most widely played sports in the United States after American football. Yet outside the U.S., countries that enthusiastically embrace baseball tend to be nations under American political influence or places formerly shaped by American colonial power. Korea is no exception. In Korea, baseball is a hugely popular national sport and one of the best vehicles for corporate advertising.

A baseball game typically lasts around two hours and is broadcast live on television. It is an extraordinarily effective marketing system that imprints corporate logos displayed on players’ uniforms onto viewers for hours. I used a chicken purchased through an American-style distribution system to express a condition in which one cannot help but respond passively to the system, using baseball — a quintessentially American sport — as the metaphor.

Through this work, I was able to become not a consumer but a final producer. Instead of using a supermarket chicken for cooking, I transformed it into a baseball, endowed it with meaning as an artwork, and circulated it as an art object.


LEE: You mentioned that, in order not to fully agree with efficiency, you deliberately moved outside the range of data assigned to those objects. Yet in doing so, they were instantly transformed into artworks. Howard Risatti argues that unlike craft, which possesses intrinsic and essential properties or laws, fine art inevitably involves questions of communication, and therefore its meaning changes according to context.

A hammer transformed into a mirror or books transformed into dumbbells are, in terms of their original functions, essentially useless trash. They are now placed in a condition where they can only exist as fine art whose sole purpose is communication. Conversely, this transformation almost appears to declare: “Because this object’s efficiency has now become zero, it has become art.”

In that sense, are you not actually fulfilling the role that the system expects from art? If so, could one not say that you are also rigorously following the systems and rules of art itself? Have you ever considered that your actions may in fact be following the very manual expected of artists?

LW: I should now give the second answer I mentioned earlier. When I create something using an object, I do not call the result an artwork; I call it a product or production. In the past, some people referred to my works as readymades. At the time, I did not agree with that characterization. Simply because I selected something does not mean its previous function is suddenly erased and transformed into art.

I think of what I do as slightly altering and twisting the ideas lodged inside people’s minds. I design small mechanisms of contradiction and lay traps so that viewers initially accept my works according to the concepts they already know. The moment viewers realize they have fallen into the trap, the work begins to operate.

The viewer experiences the boundary of contradiction and, even if only briefly, undergoes a kind of momentary neurosis. My work encourages people to slightly distrust everything. Of course, some people may actually use my works. One could play baseball with a baseball made of chicken meat, or sweep with a broom made from beef sticks. A cross made of beef still continues to function as a religious icon.


LEE: So are you trying to avoid having value assigned to them specifically as art?

LW: I think so. Is the documentary I made an artwork? Is the baseball I made an artwork? It is simply a baseball made of chicken meat. These things merely function as mediators that allow viewers to experience new processes of thought. I do not directly assign great value to the works themselves.


LEE: Then why exhibit these things in museums? The moment they enter a museum, they acquire authority as art objects. Were you perhaps intentionally trying to position them at the boundary between art and utilitarian objects?

LW: I exhibit them in museums in order to communicate my ideas under the name of art. But I do not regard museums as the only possible channel. I once sold the baseball online through an internet auction. Products made from margarine were actually uploaded and sold within margarine sections. Buyers would ask questions like, “Is this playable?” Of course, in the end they purchased them knowing they were artworks.

So when asked whether my products are “artworks” or “commodities with altered functions,” I would answer that they are both. If someone calls my work an artwork, then for that person it is an artwork. If someone still thinks of it as a baseball, then they can simply play baseball with it — although its performance would obviously be far inferior to that of a conventional baseball.

For me, these things exist as mediators for my artistic actions. Sometimes I think I may actually be closer to a performance artist. I could be a performance artist behaving like an installation artist. Extending that idea further, I could even be a curator planning a performance artist who behaves like an installation artist.

And if I expand the notion of the self even more, perhaps I am simply a capitalist conducting business through all of my actions as mediators — or perhaps a political thinker attempting to realize my own convictions.

LEE: If Given a Chance, I Do Refuse It (2012) also seems to operate within a similar context. You photographed objects exactly as they existed in their original locations and then transformed them into something akin to viewing stones that exist solely for contemplation.

Yet this work also feels highly ambivalent. On the one hand, it paradoxically reveals the enormous authority granted to the artist within the system of art. Meaningless objects become artworks through Lee Wan’s selection and intervention.

LW: If Given a Chance, I Do Refuse It deals with products that have lost their exchange value within human society — objects that have effectively become meaningless. Everything surrounding us possesses both use value and exchange value. Even the computer mouse I am holding now would revert to something like a meaningless stone, returning to a state of nature, once it breaks and loses its use value.

The fact that objects we use so actively can suddenly lose all meaning appeared to me as something akin to completely departing from society’s systems. Of course, some of those objects are entirely discarded, while others may be recycled. In any case, I approached the work with the feeling of reviving objects that had fully exited the system.

While working on this project, I explored Eastern philosophy and Buddhist concepts such as dependent origination. I wanted to show a kind of cyclical or reincarnatory temporality by exhibiting side by side: first, video recordings of objects at the precise locations where I originally encountered them — moments that marked the end of their lives as utilitarian objects and the beginning of their existence as artworks — and second, the reborn products transformed into objects of contemplation.


LEE: Collection occupies a rather significant place in your practice. While your intentions may be understood, some might still wonder what kind of artistic value the act of collecting itself possesses. I would like you to explain more concretely what collecting means to you. Also, what is it that you ultimately hope to contain or reveal through collecting?

LW: For me, not only material historical symbols — objects — but also immaterial information and data are equally subjects of collection. Looking back, I have consistently produced works entangled with social phenomena such as political, economic, and social systems. An individual’s thoughts, personality, and preferences are not formed innately; they are inevitably shaped under the overwhelming influence of their historical circumstances.

When one examines photographs and collected objects belonging to unknown individuals from the past, each item retains traces of its own era, and when these are exhibited together they naturally generate timelines and narratives. Rather than examining history through media reports or books, I think of it as constructing maps from the traces and fragments left behind by people who actually lived through those times.

Inside the diary of an elementary school student from sixty years ago, one finds daily routines completely different from those of children today. In letters written seventy years ago to distant family members, one can feel the tenderness and longing shared within conditions of poverty.

A young man’s diary written in a psychologically fragmented state during the Korean War feels profoundly different from historically written accounts of that same war found in textbooks. 

Later generations usually encounter only macro-histories. But through my collections, one can look into extremely micro-historical dimensions. Reading letters and diaries from seventy years ago is fascinating in itself, but it is equally important because such materials can supplement those microscopic parts of history that have been obscured or swept away.

At times, things we once accepted as universal history turn out to have been exaggerated, distorted, omitted, or concealed. The history we know has always been recorded by specific individuals or groups, meaning that even so-called objective history inevitably contains someone’s intentions.

Therefore, when fragments obtained through collecting intervene, history can become richer. I continue trying to locate the missing pieces of the puzzle. It is not especially important to determine what is fact or falsehood. I do not collect from the perspective of uncovering truth. What matters to me is generating richer layers of information.

For me, collected objects function as tangible evidence of history in ways fundamentally different from merely hearing or reading documented narratives. In fact, when one gathers symbols and historical fragments from a specific era, it becomes possible to understand what truly occurred during that period and how people actually lived.

There is, of course, the social history grasped through official historical narratives, but there were undoubtedly also histories that never entered those macro-historical accounts — the histories of countless anonymous individuals. Even if the puzzle remains incomplete, with many missing spaces, once enough fragments are placed together one can still begin to imagine what kind of image might eventually emerge.

LEE: How to Become Us (2011) is also frequently discussed as one of your representative works. Many people have evaluated it very highly. Personally, I find it more violent than any of your other works. When I first encountered it, I sensed the violence produced when standardized criteria are imposed uniformly; afterward, it also brought to mind the violence generated by unconditional equality.

Looking across this and your other works, your language is often highly direct. Generally, works that convey messages too directly can appear naïve or monotonous, yet your works somehow avoid becoming crude. What is the secret behind that?

LW: I often feel as though I am writing poetry when I make works. Like linking poetic phrases together, I habitually try to create sufficient space between one meaning and another. As a result, when I finish a work — especially in installation pieces — they often unfold in ways that feel literary.

Without explanation, they may appear overly abstract and difficult for audiences to communicate with, but that does not concern me too much. Sometimes I feel that a single installation compresses the narrative of an entire novel into just one or two words. So I work as though searching for the precise words needed for a line of poetry.

When I connect one object to another, I think of it as connecting one word to another. How to Become Us can likewise be interpreted in many different ways. The work presents a situation in which someone has forcibly created equality in order to realize a state of universal equality that is, in reality, impossible. In science, entropy ultimately refers to a condition becoming more stable through increasing disorder.

From our perspective, it may appear as though uncertainty within the cosmic system is intensifying, but from the perspective of the universe, this actually signifies movement toward maximum stability. In the very process through which humans attempt to create equality, situations of inevitable inequality emerge.

There is no such thing as absolute good or absolute justice. Everything is always relative and produced through relationships and causality. Just as we do not call a lion evil for eating a lamb. Yet How to Become Us contains both the perspective of the lion and that of the lamb.

The same applies to the good pursued by individuals and the collective good produced when those individual values gather together. Depending on which goals, values, or ideologies one agrees with, the concepts of equality, good, and evil can be entirely reversed.

The products in How to Become Us were all cut to the exact same weight — 5.06 kilograms, the average weight of the sixty objects I collected. If everyone is to become happy, something must inevitably be taken away from those who possess more. In that sense, the work could appear to enact an extreme form of socialism.

But the opposite interpretation is equally possible. In order to become “fair” according to a standard, every individual object becomes filled with wounds created through cutting and adjustment. Democracy, too, contains the flaw that the victorious 51 percent seize power while the defeated 49 percent must follow.

That is why democracy is often the most confrontational, noisy, and conflict-ridden system. In that sense, my work can simultaneously make sense to everyone and make no sense to anyone.

The work For a Better Tomorrow (2015), inspired by Socialist Realist painting, operates similarly. In Korea as well, such images were used during the 1970s as tools of enlightenment ideology. Because the work allows ambivalent interpretations, viewers experience it differently depending on their own prejudices.

It may even produce an inner experience in which two opposing biases collide with one another. The same applies to my photographic work Korean, Female (2016), which became highly controversial in 2016.


LEE: Korean, Female was presented in the exhibition 《Lady Dior As Seen By Seoul》 (2016). Personally, I had never perceived Lee Wan as an artist with patriarchal attitudes, nor as someone who placed sexuality at the center of his practice, so I was rather surprised by the misogyny controversy surrounding the work.

You mentioned that the piece was originally one work within the broader series ‘Korean, Male’ and ‘Korean, Female’. Yet without hearing your explanation in sufficient detail, it does seem possible that viewers could misunderstand it as misogynistic — perhaps even more so because it was a photographic work. Was the intended meaning insufficiently communicated because the series was not exhibited in its entirety?

Also, once words like “male” and “female” appear in the title, should one not exercise even greater caution? Why did you choose to categorize subjects through what appears to be a binary gender distinction? And afterward, you stated that misunderstandings were also something the artist must bear responsibility for. I would like to hear what you were thinking at the time.

LW: When Christian Dior approached me about the exhibition, one condition they proposed was that I work using a Dior bag. Their intention was to see how different artists would respond to and interpret the bag differently. Dior sent each participating artist two bags worth approximately seven million won each.

I have long been interested in the social meanings embedded within products. I pay attention to how objects carrying social significance intervene within relationships between people. Ultimately, I am interested in the human desire to possess the meanings attached to objects — in the fundamental reasons why people want to own those meanings.

In that sense, the Dior bag was an excellent material for me. Within the Dior bag, I saw reflections of the desire to consume social meaning itself. Particularly within the specific conditions of Korea — with its historical, political, social, and economic peculiarities — a luxury bag produced in France was such an ideal material that it almost felt clichéd.

There is a sociologist whose work helps explain the social meanings attached to luxury bags: Pierre Bourdieu. Thinking through Distinction (1979) and the concept of habitus may help clarify this. In fact, if one follows Bourdieu’s arguments too closely, one could end up arriving at a discriminatory conclusion in which Europe, with its long history and cultural dominance, occupies a higher social status while Asia remains lower.

Nevertheless, I do agree with his argument that once basic material consumption is satisfied, human beings begin consuming class itself.

When we purchase something in the marketplace, we buy it because we need it. But the reasons for those needs differ. Buying necessities such as rice at a supermarket is fundamentally different from owning a Christian Dior Lady Dior bag. In reality, we consume in order to demonstrate that we are different from others.

Of course, in a society like Korea — where relative psychology functions particularly strongly — consumption also often operates in the opposite direction: as a means of proving that one is not different from others. People feel stable only when they do what everyone else is doing. In feudal and agrarian class societies, upward mobility was essentially impossible no matter how hard one worked.

During the Joseon Dynasty, for example, yangban status was inherited generation after generation, just as enslaved status was inherited. But after the rise of capitalism in late nineteenth-century Europe and the collapse of feudalism, capitalist and laboring classes emerged. A new era opened in which one could work hard, accumulate wealth, and become rich like the aristocracy. It was not easy, but it became possible.

That is precisely what the petit bourgeoisie represented. Even without inheriting the lineage of an upper-class family, people could become wealthy through their own abilities and consume like the upper classes. The hope that one might succeed and become upper class through effort became one of the driving forces behind capitalist society. But in reality, such upward mobility rarely occurred.

With the rise of financial capitalism, the gap between capitalists and laborers widened even further. Now, no matter how hard one works, the day one can accumulate and consume wealth like the aristocracy never truly arrives. Yet today anyone can at least possess a bourgeois appearance. It has even become possible to temporarily costume oneself in such identities.

People equip themselves with bourgeois items and use them to increase their competitiveness in society or as tools of business marketing. Conversely, others reject such things altogether, scorning worldly desires while asserting spiritual superiority. Contemporary society constantly encourages us to live like the upper class.

The media seduces us, and people compete in pursuit of that ideal. Are we not all already living inside castles? Even apartment names are filled with aspirations toward luxury lifestyles — “OO Castle,” “OO Palace,” and so on. Appearance, facial expression, voice, style, ability, specifications — from DNA to external conditions, everything has long become subject to competition. I wanted to portray contemporary Korea through the Dior bag.

There was a Dior advertisement image that became the motif for this work. It depicted a model in an off-shoulder dress holding a Dior bag while staring expressionlessly into the camera against the backdrop of a beautiful forest. I prepared nearly identical clothing, had a model hold the same bag, and photographed her.

The only thing I changed was the background, replacing it with a Korean commercial district. The alley shown in the photograph resembles areas such as Myeongdong in Seoul.

Korea possesses a characteristic in which multiple conflicting interests become entangled within even a single issue. When an event occurs, numerous different factors usually operate simultaneously to produce complex causes. Although Korean society transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial society relatively recently, changes in social consciousness have lagged behind industrial development.

As a result, cultural structures rooted in agrarian social relations still remain intact. Examples include persistent male-centered attitudes and patriarchal behaviors, or collective cultures that insist everyone must eat or drink together. Individuals may not appear particularly problematic on their own, but once gathered into groups, uniquely Korean characteristics emerge.

The word “room” in particular revealed, through my work, the kinds of meanings it carries specifically within Korea. The place depicted in the photograph was not a site where sex was bought and sold. The woman in my photograph cannot automatically become someone selling sex simply because viewers imagine women working in entertainment establishments.

That exists only as an image or fantasy inside the minds of viewers themselves. Conceptual distortions directed toward things that do not actually exist cannot produce real subversion. At the same time, I believe viewers are free to see and feel whatever they wish. Just as I oppose those who distort my artistic intentions, they too are free to express and assert their own opinions about my work. And I consider such situations to be avant-garde.

Furthermore, if my work becomes placed at the center of debate and functions as a mediator for dialogue amid competing claims, I believe it can help society move beyond rigid thinking toward new forms of awareness. I remain critical of the male-centered values that still persist within Korean society today. I believe all minorities and marginalized individuals positioned within blind spots of perception deserve equal rights free from discrimination.

LEE: It seems that the artist has long had a great deal to say through this body of work. Today, there are many forms of consumption that are difficult to understand in terms of practicality or utility—that is, in terms of use value. It would be fair to say that the era in which use value was the most important aspect of consumption has long passed.

A representative example would be consumption intended to reveal and display one’s class or capabilities. We now live in an age in which people consume the meanings embodied by certain brands that function as symbols. Moreover, whether intentionally or not, the objects individuals own and carry with them fully reflect their identities, including their professions, tastes, and values.

There are many kinds of possessions through which individuals express their social status. Displaying one’s superiority is not limited to owning and exhibiting luxury goods. However, luxury brands offer a direct way of revealing what kind of social position one occupies—at least economically.

In a capitalist society, economic power is extremely important. Wealth is one of the key factors determining social status. For this reason, there are people who intentionally use luxury goods to construct a particular image of themselves in pursuit of their goals, as well as those who long to possess luxury goods regardless of their actual financial means.

Meanwhile, Korean, Female is a work that starkly demonstrates how an artist’s intention and its interpretation can move in completely different directions. Listening to the artist’s explanation of Korean, Female, I am reminded of Us and Them (2014). In that work, thirty participants each created their own ruler based on what they personally considered to be one centimeter, and then used that ruler to make a chair of the same dimensions.

Naturally, the sizes of the chairs varied drastically. In the exhibition space, audiences could sit on the chairs and listen to the participants’ responses to the question, “What is ‘us’?” Although chairs are objects that evoke conversation and encounter, the work conveyed a sense of disconnection. Society constantly speaks of “us,” relationships, and communication, yet just as each person’s idea of one centimeter differs, we are all profoundly different from one another, and the psychological distance between us remains vast.

Even when hearing the same words, people arrive at entirely different thoughts. A single artwork can generate completely different interpretations. Even the conversation the artist and I are having right now may be understood in entirely different ways by each of us. From the artist’s perspective, have there been other works that were misunderstood in ways completely contrary to your original intention?


LW: There was one incident. In a Hwanghak-dong antique shop, I once saw Buddhist statues displayed with price tags attached to emphasize discounts. I found it interesting that religious symbols, now circulating as commodities with material value, wore price tags almost like name badges, so I photographed the scene.

After later presenting that photograph as a work, I exhibited it at the 《Seoul International Buddhism Expo》 (2016), where it became embroiled in controversy over blasphemy. Fortunately, the organizers evaluated the work positively, saying that it sharply addressed contemporary religious issues, so the exhibition concluded without major problems.

But many Buddhists were offended at the time. Of course it would not feel pleasant to see a price tag attached to the Buddha’s chest, but it was an actual scene that existed in reality. Now culture, religion, and tradition themselves have all become things competing through price. There are even religious goods shops that sell crucifixes as “buy one, get one free.”


LEE: Product (2015) presents a situation in which the original meanings attached to religious icons have faded, and those icons are instead consumed like decorative objects placed inside homes. Criticism arguing that religion too has become subordinated to capitalist logic has existed for quite a long time.

It is certainly a topic that must be approached very carefully and sensitively, yet also one that deserves serious reflection. In the West, there are many works that actively employ Christian themes or symbols. By contrast, in Korea there are relatively few works that centrally engage religion itself. That is why your works using crosses or Buddhist statues as motifs are especially interesting.

Earlier, while explaining If Given a Chance, I Do Refuse It, you spoke about reincarnation. When working, do you consciously keep Buddhist worldviews or doctrines in mind? Does the cross made of beef truly contain no religious meaning whatsoever? Listening to you speak, it seems you are ultimately more interested in systems than in religion itself.

LW: I do not deal with religion itself as an isolated subject. As revealed most directly and concisely in the 'Made In' series, I am interested in social systems and in the ways those systems transform over time. Even while working on the 'Made In' series, I paid close attention to how neoliberal systems were changing the traditional lifestyles, cultures, religions, and lives of Asian countries.

Karl Marx said that social existence determines social consciousness. If I am a laborer, I come to possess the consciousness of a laborer. Because wages are low, I search for cheap goods when purchasing things, and I settle in places where land prices are low. As a result, even without intentional planning, areas where laborers gather naturally emerge.

When people share hardship together, they begin insisting that they must unite and support one another, and this is a natural characteristic of the human species. In this way, labor consciousness becomes further reinforced, and labor groups that form collectively begin supporting political parties that respond to their demands. Human beings alter or construct their consciousness according to their social position.

What is interesting is that when laborers work hard, accumulate wealth, and move upward into the middle class or beyond, their social consciousness also often changes. People who once supported progressive parties frequently come to support conservative ones instead.

That is why, although not universally, progressive politics tend to be supported more by younger generations while conservatism tends to gain stronger support among middle-aged and older generations. Religion operates similarly. Because the existence of God is inherently paradoxical, religion will probably continue to exist until humanity itself disappears. I constantly think about what religion means in today’s world.


LEE: In I Will Become a Flower and Be with You in the Next Life (2010), there appear a skull made of margarine and a dead sparrow. In the video work of the same title produced in 2009, a cake decaying with mold appears. In Dei Gratia (2008), you even filmed the decomposition of an actual dead sparrow.

Although such imagery does not appear consistently throughout all of your works, images evoking death or vanitas occasionally emerge. Are you interested in representing life and death?

LW: Just as the laws of nature endlessly continue through cycles of life and death, creation and extinction, society also persists as a kind of ecosystem. Even if the operational rules change according to the nature of power, the system itself does not disappear. Individual beings may perish, yet the system remains intricately intact. In my work, beef becomes a cross, but people’s perception rarely extends that far.

Because they recognize it only as a sign, the beef cross is simply accepted as a cross. Rather than associations such as “cross → beef → life → slaughter → industrial livestock systems → bioethics → human conscience → sin → cross,” people instead arrive at associations like “cross → heaven → repentance → church.”

There is no attempt to move beyond the impressions and information already accumulated through prior experiences of the cross. I think the information constructed within the human brain functions like traffic lights placed on roads. That is why the fact that my cross is made of beef is extremely important.

I have established a new traffic system that allows the sign and its essential meaning to move in different directions. Because I focus on how meaning is assigned, what matters more to me is not life and death themselves, but the meanings contained within the cycle of life and death.


LEE: Let us now talk about the 'Made In' series. Like your other works, this project is both direct and ambivalent. As we live our lives, we faithfully perform the roles society assigns to us, or roles we believe we have actively chosen for ourselves. We pay little attention to roles outside of those.

Likewise, we rarely think about the systems and processes through which the things we eat and use arrive to us. As a result, we naturally overlook the historical, political, and social meanings embedded within the commodities we consume. The 'Made In' series appears to rebel against this indifference, tracing history through the eyes of a single individual. 

The extreme inefficiency of personally producing a single meal completely runs counter to neoliberalism, perhaps the defining system of our era. From the perspective of economic efficiency, it would actually be far more effective to ignore the series of problems you raise.

Yet this work, which at first glance may seem like an individual deviation, contains within it the structures of capitalism, hierarchies between nations, and neo-colonial conditions concealed behind the products we consume without thought.

Even an ordinary breakfast is entangled with global political and economic conditions, and the work especially reveals how colonialism remains deeply connected to Asia’s modern history and industrialization. For example, Cambodia produced rice, Myanmar gold, Taiwan sugar, Thailand silk, while Korea produced wigs and straw shoes.

But would everyone necessarily agree that the objects you produced are historically representative products of each nation? It could also appear to be an entirely subjective selection.

LW: Most scholars would agree that these are historically significant products. For example, rice is Cambodia’s largest export product. And when speaking about Cambodia, one cannot leave out the historical tragedy of the Killing Fields. Countless people are buried in that land of sorrow without gravestones or graves.

I heard about an elderly man who had once been a soldier during the Khmer Rouge era and was now farming rice, so I went to meet him. I received rice harvested by him, rented land, and planted that rice again myself. In Taiwan, sugar production was industrialized by Japan during the period of Japanese colonial rule, and after liberation it became one of Taiwan’s foundational industries. In Malaysia, I produced palm oil. Malaysian palm oil goes into the snacks and cosmetics we consume every day.

LEE: Why wigs in Korea?

LW: There were particular industrialization strategies that Korea pursued during the 1960s and 1970s. I sought out someone who had worked in the wig industry during the 1960s and learned how wigs were made from her. She was still making wigs professionally. Through her life, I wanted to look into Korean history, and I was able to hear detailed stories about that era directly from her.

In the 1960s, when the overriding priority was simply to export by any means possible, wigs were an extremely important export industry, much like automobiles are today. I cut off the hair I had grown for three years and made a wig myself. The 'Made In' series is ultimately about thinking through the seemingly trivial things that exist around us today in order to reflect on how people have lived until now and how they may live in the future.


LEE: The 'Made In' series initially began with the idea of personally producing every element of a single breakfast from beginning to end. However, there were cases in which you could not complete everything entirely on your own.

Of course, even with the assistance of others, the works still seem successful in conveying your intentions and critical perspective, so I do not wish to treat that as a flaw. But did you establish any personal criteria regarding the acceptance of others’ help?

LW: What mattered most was experiencing as much of the process as possible. Because of that, even though working alone was not especially important to me, I often ended up working alone. Of course, there were also situations where it was realistically impossible to proceed without assistance. In those cases, I did not establish any particular criteria regarding receiving help from others.

However, I tried very deliberately to distance myself from approaches that objectify vulnerable people — such as Southeast Asian laborers or minorities — in order to criticize large-scale systems or political structures. I have often seen this kind of ethical contradiction in the works of journalistic photographers or documentary filmmakers.

When I see someone carefully composing a “golden ratio” shot at the site of a tragedy, or filming scenes of migrant workers’ human rights violations in order to criticize capitalism or social power structures, while simultaneously objectifying those workers and directing them according to the artist’s intentions, I find it deeply troubling.

Another important characteristic of the 'Made In' series is that although it moves through sites of labor across Asia, it objectifies no one. Instead, I objectify myself as the artist. From a neutral perspective, I place both the artist and the viewer at the same point, ultimately allowing viewers to choose their own positions regarding both past and present issues.

That is why people who encounter my work are able to debate with one another. I think the fact that I, as the figure leading the videos, simultaneously estrange myself and move alongside viewers from the position of an observer is what makes audiences continue watching videos that might otherwise feel tedious. Watching all thirteen videos, each approximately fifteen minutes long, amounts to nearly three and a half hours.


LEE: In the 'Made In' series, you work among laborers in the places you visit, converse with them, and attempt to build relationships. Yet despite your efforts to actively understand their histories and systems, you still appear alienated. Struggling to become self-sufficient, you sometimes resemble Robinson Crusoe abandoned on a deserted island, and at other times a modern individual consumed by labor in order to earn money for consumption.

In the age of capitalism, people often claim that all authenticity has disappeared and that virtual images now overflow everywhere. Knowledge has become distorted and fragmented, while critical attitudes have vanished. Ultimately, they say, human beings have become alienated within consumer society. Watching the videos, I thought perhaps you intentionally sought to reveal this reality.

At the same time, however, another thought occurred to me: perhaps the images of the countries you attempted to portray through the works were themselves already illusions produced within capitalist systems, and what surfaced instead was the sense of dislocation you experienced on site.

Perhaps the psychological state of an artist unable to fully adapt to unfamiliar places could not be concealed. At the very least, one could say that your reasons for selecting the sites visited for the 'Made In' series, as well as the materials you collected, may themselves have been based on already-constructed images and information.

In any case, this aspect was extremely interesting because it connects to the question of the Other. Most of the countries addressed in the 'Made In' series historically occupied the position of the Other politically and economically during industrialization. Yet the artist who enters those regions of alterity becomes an outsider — another Other — himself.

LW: I travel with the explicit purpose of producing products. Never once did I attempt to engage in cultural exchange with local people or judge their human rights conditions or political situations according to my own ideological standards. Looking back, it seems that I was almost trying to interpret political economy from an anthropological perspective.

In the 'Made In' series, I regarded political conditions and industrial structures as ecological systems or living organisms that had evolved over time, and I traced the historical causes and reasons that produced their present forms. Although I constantly appear as an outsider within the videos, I am simultaneously the most active and dynamic presence within them.

If one were to remove the background and script from the videos, my actions would appear almost primitive, consisting of extremely simple forms of labor. Because I stand on the side of those positioned outside the camera, observing myself, the fact that I can only ever remain an outsider becomes even more emphasized.

I do not think it was necessarily a psychological inability to adapt to unfamiliar places. In fact, unlike the dry atmosphere of the videos themselves, I genuinely enjoyed traveling with the friends I met in those countries. Of course, I also spent long periods of time alone, and that solitude probably influenced the videos. And while making the works, I really was lonely and exhausted.


LEE: One could criticize the 'Made In' series for never escaping the gaze of a tourist merely visiting foreign places, and for instead reinforcing an imperialistic form of othering. Could it not be said that, despite your efforts, you are still strengthening stereotypes and objectifying these countries without a sufficiently deep understanding of their histories and socio-political or economic conditions?

No matter how hard you try, it is impossible for an artist to fully understand their social, political, and economic situations or their histories. Since the works are edited from footage captured during relatively short stays, there also seems to be a risk of misunderstanding and distortion.

LW: Since I am clearly an outsider, the work inevitably takes on the character of a travelogue. Of course, one must guard against becoming trapped within a single perspective or a single critical framework. However, I would also counter that this criticism itself may emerge from an imperialistic gaze — or from prejudices that evaluate and generalize others according to one’s own standards.

From our perspective, we may think that people in developing countries live difficult lives under poor conditions, but reality cannot be judged so simply. Furthermore, the logic that an artist must necessarily assimilate into the local environment where the work is made can create another problem entirely.

The artist himself may end up distorting the very conditions of the place in which he exists. If I had fully assimilated into local life and formed intimate relationships there, the 'Made In' series would probably have become no different from an ordinary documentary.

To elaborate further, the foundation of the capitalist system consists of producers and laborers. Between the two exists money, a fluid medium that maintains balance between them. Their relationship is ultimately directed toward the purpose of production. This, in turn, fulfills desires for consumption and self-realization.

But such equilibrium is always fragile and easily collapses for many reasons. Producers want to reduce costs, laborers want to work less while earning higher wages, and consumers want better products for the least amount of money possible. As these characteristics of the human species operate, the balance of the system breaks down, generating conflict and competition.

In order to gain an advantage within competition, people sometimes overlay products with fantasies that have nothing to do with their actual value. Yet as competition intensifies, capital becomes increasingly centralized. Objects once produced through diverse processes within distinct cultures, and which therefore possessed unique identities, are gradually absorbed into global corporations serving worldwide markets. It is like how, when thinking about mobile phones today, people immediately think only of Samsung or Apple.

Even if one becomes critically aware of this condition, nothing fundamentally changes. Countless producers are pushed out by large corporations competing over profit margins, shut down their businesses, and instead buy stock in those same corporations. A person who once sold vegetables independently in a traditional market simply becomes an employee selling vegetables inside a large supermarket.

The 'Made In' series is not intended as a direct critique of systemic problems or the concentration of wealth. Rather, it focuses on something that must come before such criticism.

LEE: Some people evaluate the 'Made In' series as if it were merely a documentary showing extreme hardship. They ask what meaning there is in simply going somewhere and showing oneself suffering through difficult conditions.

LW: That interpretation is perfectly fine as well. It is natural for different viewers to produce different responses. People who feel that the 'Made In' series merely depicts extreme labor are focusing exclusively on the labor itself. In reality, labor is a simple act, but because it is directly intertwined with society, the perspective or prejudice through which one views labor will inevitably affect how my work is read.

I often say that my work functions like a mirror reflecting the lives and thoughts of viewers themselves. One viewer once told me that he watched Made in Taiwan, Sugar & Sugar Jar & Sugar Spoon (2013) together with his son and found the process of making sugar extremely fascinating.

For some people, my work may become an educational video that simply provides information about how sugar or gold is produced. For others, it may be received as a documentary exposing contradictions embedded within history.


LEE: The scripts contained in the 'Made In' series appear highly objective, almost like explanatory texts. Yet at the same time, one could argue that they communicate only highly fragmentary stories. Although they appear objective, they are ultimately historical narratives told by a single artist.

In other words, they may be subjective texts disguised as objective explanations. Since history and society are described through such a narrow frame, could the work not be criticized for creating the possibility of misunderstanding?

LW: Like a travel guide, I explain the politics, economy, culture, and religion of the countries I visit. Of course, within a fifteen-minute video there are limits to what can be explained. Still, I draw upon historical facts in order to explain as concisely as possible why the product I am producing is important within that country.

Rather than beginning from a narrow frame, I start from something already extremely narrow — namely, the product itself — and therefore thought it would be better to guide the work inductively from there. The concrete historical facts and political conditions described in my scripts may seem fragmentary, but in fact they are very important. I want the history of the countries I visit to exist around the products I make.

Misunderstandings and mistranslations of artworks are always possible, which is why I continually hope my works can become spaces where people debate and discuss with one another.


LEE: If stories are generated together in this way, then perhaps it is not really misunderstanding, but rather the production of discourse from multiple perspectives.

LW: Exactly. Someone may misunderstand it, someone else may find it important, while another person may feel it is unimportant. Others may simply remain indifferent. There is also no rule saying one must not feel sadness. But to me, all of these responses are equally important. I do not focus exclusively on any single type of reaction or attach particular importance to one over another.

Another characteristic of my work is its ambiguity. Furthermore, some works contain inherently contradictory keywords. The attempt to place two opposing propositions within a single work is a method I frequently employ not only in the 'Made In' series, but also in photography, sculpture, and painting. I believe my work truly begins to function when people holding different opinions argue about it.


LEE: Why did you choose to edit the video footage? Wouldn’t showing the entire process without editing communicate the experience more directly and reduce the possibility of misunderstanding? What is interesting is that despite being edited, the 'Made In' series still appears to have been filmed in a highly neutral manner, with the artist’s psychological state largely excluded.

In reality, however, nothing can ever be entirely neutral, just as journalistic perspectives inevitably shape news articles. Overall, the work gives off a somewhat cynical feeling. Do you have any plans to focus more on the psychological dimensions of human desire within systems?

LW: There is no need to unnecessarily show the entire process. It is enough if viewers can understand the process through which the artist produced the product. In works like the 'Made In' series, where I am seriously engaged in something essentially useless, the absence of visible emotion may indeed feel very strange. In fact, throughout all my work, including 'Made In', I try as much as possible to eliminate adjectives.

I deliberately remove attempts that reveal the artist too directly, such as psychological rhetoric or aesthetically elaborate mise-en-scène. Paradoxically, by revealing no emotions whatsoever, I ultimately contain all of my emotions within the work. So I believe viewers are still able to sense the artist’s emotions after encountering the work. This could perhaps be compared to the Buddhist notion of the Middle Way.

Even in the memorial monument appearing in Made in Vietnam-Rubber & Coffee (2016), I did not want to present the monument from either side’s perspective. I merely pose questions, believing that we must think together and arrive at conclusions collectively. I am interested in human beings. Humans are contradictory creatures, and therefore can neither be fully understood nor completely understand themselves.

I believe this is precisely why art can continue to remain deeply connected to human life: through thinking, conversing, and reflecting together upon all those things that cannot be fully communicated through language alone.


LEE: It feels as though we have almost reached the end. Let me ask a few questions that are perhaps slightly more personal. How did you first begin making art?

LW: According to my parents, ever since I was very young I liked staring intently at things and was good at drawing doodle-like pictures. Since both of my parents majored in music, they hoped I would pursue something outside the arts. In middle school, I became known in my class as the student who could draw well, and I occasionally earned pocket money by drawing pictures for friends.

One day an art teacher happened to see one of the drawings I had made for a friend, and I ended up joining the school art club. After that, I entered many art competitions and won numerous prizes. Things progressed naturally from there: I attended an arts high school and later an art college. During university, I wanted to become a fashion photographer and even worked as an assistant under a well-known fashion photographer.

But fashion photography turned out to be very different from what I had imagined, so I quit and returned to school. Immediately after my graduation exhibition, I went to visit John Pai, a Korean American artist I had admired since high school. That became the starting point from which I decided to live as an artist.


LEE: Of course every artist is profoundly shaped by personal experience, but the more we speak, the more it seems that your own experiences have had a particularly strong influence on your work. Even when your works move toward large-scale discourse, they begin from highly microscopic personal histories and everyday life.

LW: If I had to condense all the keywords appearing throughout my work into a single term, it would probably be “inevitability” or “inescapable force.” The unavoidable force of life itself. Everyone encounters, experiences, and chooses things in life that they never intended. And life continues under the influence of those choices. That is why even the smallest things we encounter in daily life are connected to the universe.


LEE: I was surprised to hear that you do DJing. Come to think of it, whenever we met in your studio or conducted interviews, you always had music playing.

LW: I simply listen to the music I like one track after another. I truly love music. Of course everyone says they love music, but I practically have music playing all day, every day. By coincidence, a DJ with great taste opened an LP bar in my neighborhood, and I naturally became a regular there.

Eventually, I also started DJing at the bar myself. I think my work resembles DJing in many ways. By mixing history with history, history with objects, objects with objects, objects with spaces, thoughts with thoughts, and so on, new meanings emerge, producing ideas and logics that had never existed before.


LEE: Are there any artists you particularly admire? Throughout our conversations, I have rarely heard you mention the work of other artists.

LW: I am not especially moved by aesthetic spatial compositions, visually spectacular scenes, or descriptive installations spread across exhibition spaces. Around ten years ago, when I first began making work, I liked Francis Alÿs and Doris Salcedo. I was fascinated by the points at which situations or spaces become transformed through an artist’s intervention.


LEE: What was the most bewildering moment you experienced while producing work or preparing exhibitions?

LW: One example would be when someone mistook my work for trash and threw it away. Because of that, eight parts of How to Become Us no longer exist. I was installing the work at the exhibition venue and initially thought I had simply left those pieces back in my studio. Later I found out they had actually been discarded and destroyed. In the end, I exhibited the work with those eight spaces left empty.

There was also a time during the production of Made in Myanmar, Gold (2014) when the mountain motorcycle I was using broke down deep in the mountains. That was an extremely dangerous situation. I was told that wolves roamed the area at night. Fortunately, no wolves appeared, and although it took a long time, I eventually managed to repair the motorcycle there in the mountains.


LEE: Let us briefly discuss A Diligent Attitude Towards a Meaningless Thing (2017). You previously presented a similar painting work in 2012. For this piece, day laborers hired at an hourly wage of 8,000 won were instructed to meticulously paint a 100-size canvas for three days using the thinnest commercially available brushes, after which you added gestures reminiscent of action painting on top of their work.

For the laborers, the act of painting was merely a means of survival. It was entirely different from the brushwork of an artist. Two completely opposing forms of action coexist within the work. You have also explained that the work can only truly be completed once it is sold. This appears to function as a satire on labor, creative production, and the art market within capitalist systems.

LW: I cannot avoid speaking about the value labor possesses in our era. I also hold doubts about art itself. A Diligent Attitude Towards a Meaningless Thing is an experiment asking whether there exists any shared meaning among the producer of a commodity, the laborers engaged in its production, and the consumer.

At the same time, I made the work while thinking about how a single image becomes historicized and what structures make that process possible. A Diligent Attitude Towards a Meaningless Thing is a flat painting that simulates the entire process through which a product comes into existence. My own objective is profit, while collectors assign meaning to my work and pay for it.

The laborers who participated in this work were motivated only by hourly wages, and therefore attached no meaning whatsoever to their brushstrokes. They had no interest in what they were doing; they simply provided diligence. This also connects to the 'Made In' series. Local producers likewise have little interest in where the objects they make eventually go or how they are ultimately used.

I understood commercial conventions and followed them in order to create a product possessing commodity value. In Bank of LEE WAN (2013–present), a project I have been developing for several years, I plan to reveal attempts to connect all of my past works together.

LEE: There are aspects of Lee Wan’s views that I agree with, and others that I do not. The artist and I hold rather significant differences in thought at certain points. We also perceive some events and social phenomena differently. In truth, this is only natural. As the artist himself has said, although we live within the same system, we also each inhabit our own distinct systems and follow different manuals.

Even between people who appear, to themselves or to others, to share many similarities, differences in values and opinions inevitably arise. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, even when we use the same words in conversation, we may in fact be using them to convey entirely different meanings. And of course, it is impossible to fully understand an artist’s practice through a single project alone. Before we conclude, is there anything you would like to add?

LW: In the end, people see, hear, and desire only what they themselves wish to see, hear, and desire. My work ultimately deals with human life and meaning within systems.

As revealed in Proper Time – Though the Dreams Revolve with the Moon (2017), a work in which I calculated the speed at which time flows for 1,200 individuals based on interview data such as personal income, the cost of a single meal, and the amount of time spent eating, everyone remains within the same system while nevertheless living their lives at entirely different speeds.


LEE: I am truly pleased to have been able to engage in such an in-depth conversation about the work of a single artist. I sincerely thank Lee Wan for willingly participating as the first artist of the LeepoétiQue Project.

References

• [인터뷰] 리포에틱 평론과 대화-이완
  [Interview] LeepoétiQue Criticism and Conversation — Lee Wan