All visual art requires the act of ‘seeing.’
Based on the act of ‘seeing,’ which is the fundamental of visual art, I conceptually explore visual art itself. My special interest in seeing stemmed from my nearsighted and astigmatic eye condition, which I have had since I was young. To this day, I often take off my glasses in the evening and enjoy seeing street lights and car headlights blur like snowflakes. However, people around me had pushed me to have eye correction surgery for a long time. Whenever I was forced to do that, I felt like I was being denied myself as I was, so it was hard for me. Therefore, I started to find a way to share the beautiful scenery I see with my naked eyes with others. Inwardly, I wished them to accept me as I am one day. And this pursuit became my art project. Since then, I have been focusing on how to reveal myself and other people optically sense the world differently, using devices such as cameras and producing corneal* filters through a vast amount of research. Recently, I have been expanding my artistic research on ‘seeing’ beyond my personal and optical level to explore and question the relationship between the act of ‘seeing’ and visual art.
Yoonjae Lee studied Visual Arts at Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL), Switzerland, and achieved a Master's degree in 2023. This year (2024), she had her fourth solo show at Caption Seoul, funded by the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture. Now, she is joining a group show at CR Collective in Seoul. As the selected artist of Perigee Team Project 2025, she will have an exhibition at Perigee Gallery in Seoul in 2026 after a year of upcoming collaboration with Curator Ju-ok Han.
Based on the act of ‘seeing,’ which is the fundamental of visual art, I conceptually explore visual art itself. My special interest in seeing stemmed from my nearsighted and astigmatic eye condition, which I have had since I was young. To this day, I often take off my glasses in the evening and enjoy seeing street lights and car headlights blur like snowflakes. However, people around me had pushed me to have eye correction surgery for a long time. Whenever I was forced to do that, I felt like I was being denied myself as I was, so it was hard for me. Therefore, I started to find a way to share the beautiful scenery I see with my naked eyes with others. Inwardly, I wished them to accept me as I am one day. And this pursuit became my art project. Since then, I have been focusing on how to reveal myself and other people optically sense the world differently, using devices such as cameras and producing corneal* filters through a vast amount of research. Recently, I have been expanding my artistic research on ‘seeing’ beyond my personal and optical level to explore and question the relationship between the act of ‘seeing’ and visual art.
*A cornea is the outermost part of the eye and affects image distortion.
Yoonjae Lee studied Visual Arts at Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL), Switzerland, and achieved a Master's degree in 2023. This year (2024), she had her fourth solo show at Caption Seoul, funded by the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture. Now, she is joining a group show at CR Collective in Seoul. As the selected artist of Perigee Team Project 2025, she will have an exhibition at Perigee Gallery in Seoul in 2026 after a year of upcoming collaboration with Curator Ju-ok Han.
edited in November. 2024