Young Joo Lee 이영주

The last 3 days left to see <The Carrier Bags of Power> @citedesartsparis vitrine. Thanks to my dear old friend @min_minline for visiting and taking this pic 📸

Hello world! this weekend, I am opening my studio for the open studios at Cité Montmartre @citedesartsparis Would be happy to have conversations and encounters known and unknown 🌿🐦‍⬛🐌🦔🐍🦌🌿 please find more info in the links in my bio.

It was a joy to share my work with Paris public past Wednesday @citedesartsparis . Thanks to everyone who came by. <Carrier bags of power> runs until February 21, open everyday from 10am-7pm. 1. <Temporal Power> collects the portraits of 323 current (data collected in November 2025) presidents, prime ministers, and kings in the world are merged to create a single, average portrait. 2. <Nova Earth Odyssey> (left: video, 4 minutes, music produced by @noahjino.o commissioned by @seoulmuseumofart ) and <Transmissions> (right: bee's wax, paraffin, plaster) 3. <Mago, her journeys to the west> (left) and <Nova Earth Odyssey> (right)

I am happy to present <Carrier bags of power> @citedesartsparis Vitrine space in Paris. It’s been great being part of this vibrant international group of artists the past months. I made a few new pieces during this time including a floor relief. The show will open on January 21, on the night of Open studios (6-9pm) and close on February 21. Looking forward to meeting and conversing with familiar and new faces! Link to more info in my bio. The works in Carrier Bags of Power were made after my daughter’s birth. Pregnancy and childbirth made me aware that each of us is shaped by a lineage: our mothers - their bodies, love, endurance, and struggles. Women’s bodies are carrier bags: vessels of life, memory, and care, not instruments of conquest. Becoming a mother made me long for a different social order, one in which care is not private labor or moral virtue, but a principle of power. To move toward that possibility, I began dismantling the symbolism of spiritual and temporal authority: hierarchies embedded in religion, creation stories, and today’s politics, where a single figure stands above other living beings. From there, I turned to societies organized differently from patriarchal models. Matrilineal and matrifocal communities have endured despite globalization, often a process of patriarchalization. They offer living examples of alternative structures: environmentally sustainable, gender-equal, and community-based, where women, children, and elders are valued.

It was my 2nd birthday in France! Life never goes as planned- After leaving my short-lived professorship at Simon Fraser university in Vancouver, I moved to Paris to start my PhD in SACRe program at @normalesup , where Foucault and Sartre’s spirits live. It’s been a rocky and joyful journey so far. Thankful for all the friendly encounters here and tasting all sorts of cheeses, wines, and seeing my little baby grow into a walking & talking beautiful being! Thanks @veronikadraexler @citedesartsparis for this studio shot :)

Mago, her journeys to the west, 2025. Oil on canvas, 80cm × 100cm Mago or Magu (in Chinese) is a goddess (Korea) or an immortal being (China), that appears in East Asian historical and religious texts, literature, folklore, folksongs, and art. The logographic meaning of 麻姑 ("Magu") is given as "Hemp Maiden" or "Hemp Goddess." This work is a reinterpretation of Magocheji, a small painting (19.0x21.9㎝) by an artist named Seok Kyung (15th century, Joseon Dynasty), in which Mago’s face is erased. In Magocheji, Mago appears as a goddess who rules the world, much like in earlier myths. She is also portrayed as a nurturing figure, shown carrying a deer while searching for reishi mushrooms. One of the three primordial deities known as Samshin (three gods), Mago is said to have borne descendants without a partner and to bless her offspring with new life. She gathers reishi —the legendary “mushroom of immortality”— which underscores her role as a giver of eternal vitality. This portrait personally moved me, for its humble look (as a goddess) and how it reminds me of the women and men gathering food and medicine in nature in Korea and elsewhere- their knowledge and experience are something that I feel I want to carry on in me and hand down to the next generation. As I was working on this, I found reishi mushrooms growing on a tree stump right in front of my place. My daughter always says hello to it. AND there are more temporary mushrooms coming out like umbrellas.

Hands hands hands ------- After Work, 2025 Oil on canvas, 35.5cm × 28cm Untitled, 2023 watercolor on paper, 17cm × 12cm LoveTouch, 2024 super 8mm digital transfer, 02" 54' video still #hands #motherhood #painting #videoart #contemporaryartwork

Home studio and the visitors 😍

Celebrating International Women's Day! 1. Excerpt from <Nova Earth Odyssey> (2024), 3D animation music video, 4minutes. 2. (Left) Sesklo culture's bird goddess sculpture (Megali Vrisi, Tirnavos, Thessaly: 5900-5700 В.С.) (Right) Figurine in a squatting posture. Chalcolithic Cyprus (provenance unknown; c. 3000 B.C.) Both from Marija Gimbutas' "The Language of the Goddess" 3. Bird goddess in my studio, oil on canvas. 2025

30hours. Oil on Canvas. 36*28cm

Hello world! I will be on the online panel talk together with artist Jon Rafman, moderated by Dr. Dan Hassler-Forest, hosted by Taipei Fine Arts Museum this Saturday, November 23. Please find the registration & Zoom link and more info in the link in my bio. Convolutions Public Program III. Dystopian Sci-fi Futures and Digital Corporeality 2024.11.23 Saturday 17:30-19:30 in Taipei/ 10:30-12:30 CET/ 1:30-3:30 Los Angeles Emerging technologies such as AI and biotech have enabled society to move toward a synthetic reality in which human and non-human actors collaborate and the dichotomy between digital and physical disappears. What, then, is the meaning and the role of corporeal bodies in the future world? This panel discussion invites two artists who explore this question through speculative scenarios and will be moderated by media scholar Dr. Dan Hassler-Forest. Young Joo Lee will share her artworks, Lizardians (2021)  and Nova Earth Odyssey  (2024). Through science fiction narratives about a biotech company that applies genetic engineering as the future of aesthetics product, along with a music video that remixes religions, current social issues and K-pop aesthetics from a female-centered perspective, both works critically reflect on the patriarchal social infrastructure and technology within a capitalistic system. Jon Rafman’s web-based interactive game, S.S. Lacuna: Prologue (2024), is set inside a dystopian AI-generated universe in which the player becomes enmeshed in an illegal organ-harvesting operation and is recruited as a mercenary. The game poses a thought-provoking question about the implications when the resource contested by the global elite is not oil or technology but human flesh.

안녕하세요, 여수국제미술제 @2024yiaf 에 초대합니다! 두 비디오 작품들 <스시우먼의 노래>와 <밀크초콜릿바를 먹는 방법>을 전시합니다. 여수국제미술제 2024 <소울푸드 엔 블랙칵테일> 8/30-10/3 오프닝: 8월 30일, 오후 5시 여수엑스포 D전시홀 예술감독: 박순영 주제전 참여작가: 구민자, 구성연, 권은비, 김기라, 김영섭, 김은형, 김준, 빠키, 성유삼, 안민욱, 요이, 윤상윤, 이세경, 이영주, 이용백, 이창원, 이피, 정연두, 정정엽, 정혜정, 하루.K, 하태범, 홍기원, 홍 이현숙, 아이스 알론소(필리핀), 이노우에 아미(일본), 제스퍼 저스트(덴마크), 줄리아 뮌스터만(독일), 킴 킬드(덴마크), 수잔 앵 커(미국), 탈라마다니 (이란), 트라스파렌트(이탈리아), 왕핑 (홍콩) Hello Yeosu! Showing my two video works <Song from Sushi> and <How to eat a bar of milk chocolate> @2024yiaf alongside wonderful group of artists. Not sure about the black cocktail, but definitely my soul is being nourished with food in Korea. Please find further info in the links in my bio. Yeosu International Art Festival 2024 <Soulfood & Black Cocktail> 8/30-10/3 Opening reception: 5pm, August 30. Yeosu Expo Exhibition Hall D Main Exhibition Soulfood & Black Cocktail D1, D3, D4 Participating artists: Gu Minja, Koo Seongyeon, Kwon Eunbi, Kim Kira, Kim Youngsup, Kim Eunhyung, Kim Joon, Vakki, Yo-E Ryou, Yoon Sangyoon, Lee Sekyung, Lee Youngjoo, Lee Yongbaek, Lee Changwon, Fi Jae Lee, Jung Yeondoo, Jung Jungyeob, Jung Haejung, Haru.K, Ha Taebum, Hong Kiwon, HongLee Hyunsook, Aiess Alonso, Inoue Ami, Jesper Just, Julia Münstermann, Kim Kilde, Suzanne Anker, Tala Madani, Trasparente, Wong Ping Cameo: Sung Yusam, An Minwook 주최/주관: 여수시, 여수국제미술제 추진위원회 후원: 여수광양항만공사, 여수엑스포관리(주) 협력/협조: 부산시립 미술관, 부산현대미술관, 서울시립미술관, 울산시립미술관, 갤러 리 노마드, 대안공간루프, 문화공간;모음, 예술과미디어학회 협찬: 네오룩, 아튼포, (주)베스코, (유)동부 #여수국제미술제 #2024여수국제미술제 #소울푸드엔블랙칵테 일 #박순영예술감독 #2024yiaf #yiaf2024 #yeosuinternationalartfestival #soulfoodandblackcocktail