JEEWI LEE

"Beyond its ecological, economic and political implications, I'm fascinated by the stories and traces embedded in each grain of sand. Every grain carries a long history — once part of a rock, broken down by erosion, carried by water, shaped over millions of years. It becomes a small archive of time and movement. Sand has no fixed boundaries — it's constantly moving between places, and that nomadic quality resonates with me. Under a microscope, each grain reveals its own world of minerals, shells and fragments, and I'm moved by how much history can be concealed within something seemingly insignificant."

"My work focuses on "the trace," representing the past, presence, and absence. For me, a trace is a moment in which past and present overlap, where absence and presence coexist. Traces are silent witnesses that something or someone was once there, even when that presence has long since disappeared.

"I'm drawn to the remnants we overlook in everyday life — things we rarely pay attention to or assign value to. I'm not interested in telling a story in its entirety, but in the moment a trace raises questions and becomes a drawing. That way, absence doesn't become an empty space, but a quiet, almost physical presence that can be felt."

"Living between different places has changed my understanding of home. Home is no longer tied to a geographical location for me — it can emerge through memories, relationships, materials, smells, or everyday rituals. It's less a place than a state of being.

"When you live between places, you're constantly confronted with absence — present in one place, absent from another. Over time I've come to see this not only as loss, but as a condition where different places and memories stay connected. Maybe that's also why I'm drawn to sand — a grain carries the history of where it came from while still moving elsewhere."

"For my work Past Tense I was interested in how life inscribes itself into a material. Hanji Jangpan, traditional Korean paper flooring, is a good example — paper is usually something we write on, but in Korea everyday life is inscribed into the material itself.

"Traditionally, Korean floors were covered with oiled paper for protection. Over the years, heat from the underfloor Ondol heating turned the surface different shades of brown, while sunlit areas bleached. Because Korean culture was a sitting culture, daily life left more direct traces — iron marks, notes written on the floor, whole landscapes where tea ceremonies took place. By cutting out sections and framing them — the graphic bars echoing the grid the floor was built on — I transform their meaning. What was once barely noticed suddenly becomes something to look at, almost like a drawing, a painting."

"In my work, colour often emerges directly from the material itself — I'm drawn to the colours a material already contains. Sand makes this evident: depending on its origin, it can be ochre, greenish grey, red, or beige, colours that refer to the geological processes that shaped it.

"Reduction plays an important role in my practice too. By limiting colour and visual information, I create space for interpretation — a more attentive perception of texture and surface. Reduction sharpens our perception and points attention towards what's essential."

"Becoming a mother has changed my perception of time. Watching a baby grow, witnessing these changes every day, makes time visible in a very different way. My everyday experience of time has changed too — the days feel shorter, because time isn't entirely my own anymore. My days are structured around her instinctive rhythms, whereas before, my time was more flexible."

"It tends to come in phases, but lately I've been listening to a lot of albums by Nala Sinephro, Shabaka and Duval Timothy in the studio. More recently, also a lot of Lang Lee — I find her lyrics particularly compelling: humorous, critically observant and remarkably precise."

"If money were no object, an artist whose work I’d love to own is Lee Ufan. I admire how he creates such a strong presence through minimal gestures and a reduced vocabulary of materials — his work opens a space for silence, perception and reflection, letting the relationship between material, space and viewer become the work itself. It’s difficult to choose though, there’s so much wonderful and inspiring art out there.”