Yee is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Seoul, South Korea and is known for her “Translated Vase” series. She collects porcelain shards, discarded by craftsmen who reproduce porcelain artwork from the Goryeo and Joseon Dynasties. She joins the broken shards together with ribbons of 24-carat gold leaf the traditional method of repairing ceramics in Japan.
Yee grew up in South Korea in the 1970s, under a nationalist military regime. It was a time of poverty as Korea struggled to regain its national identity after decades of suppression by Japan. She enrolled at the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University and received her B.F.A in painting in 1987 and an M.F.A. in 1989.
Yee sees herself as a “matchmaker,” creating “grafted” work from these discarded porcelain shards and refers to her amorphous sculptures as “my children.” The Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) is known for its white porcelain while the Josean Dynasty (1392-1910) is known for its celadon works. Each “Translated Vase” is a collaboration between her and the artist who made the original piece from which the shards were taken. The collaboration results in voluptuous, amorphous forms of white, blue, and light green shards joined together by the technique of ‘kintsugi’ the Japanese way of binding broken porcelain with gold. She does not see a connection to Japan in her use of this technique but rather uses gold because the word for ‘gold’ and for ‘crack ‘is the same in Korean.
In 2014, Yee began drawing and painting in her ongoing project, “Past Life Regression Painting.” These works reveal her visions of reincarnations and past lives seen through hypnosis. “I cross-examine my own visions of reincarnations and past lives, which, for better or worse, is a central aspect of East Asian thinking. Images and narratives I see during every past life regression are captured in these paintings.”
She has had solo exhibitions in Japan, United States, England, Korea, Germany, Brazil, Belgium, Taipei, Italy, and Singapore and has shown internationally at Biennales in Venice, Sydney, and Buson.
Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Saatchi Collection in London, the Museum of Applied Arts and Science in Sydney, and many others.
More here.
The Women's Studio 