Though trained in photography, Jung Lee describes her interest as one conceptually grounded in the limits of language, and how language operates as an image. Lee is best known for her photographs of text-based light installations set directly into the landscape. Her series are grouped by the texts they reference or sources. “Aporia” (2010-2011), for example, takes motifs from Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, and culls expressions of love and hatred from TV, internet forums, and popular movies. In previous series, Lee used phrases and slogans from North Korea and placed these on the country’s desolate border to South Korea; in another, she places extracts from her interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy over bodies of water such that the lights create reflections.
Korean, b. 1972, based in Seoul, Korea
