Yona Lee

INFO

Name	Yona Lee (she/her)
Born	1986
Country of Birth	South Korea
Place of Residence	Seoul, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Ethnicities	Korean
Dealer Gallery	Fine Arts, Sydney
Artform	Visual arts
Decades Active	2010s, 2020s

ABOUT

Yona Lee is a contemporary visual artist, known for her ambitious site-specific sculptures, which often sprawl through gallery and non-gallery spaces — foyers, kitchens, bathrooms — and invite viewers to interact with them in ways that defy art’s no-touching conventions. Lee’s works fill gallery spaces, combining stainless steel sculptures that hang, arc and intersect throughout the rooms, incorporating everyday objects such as mops, wine glasses, functional lamps, beds and the hanging straps found on public transport.

Over the past decade, Lee has developed an international profile as a contemporary artist. Significant solo exhibitions of her work have been staged at galleries in Aotearoa and Australia, such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Auckland Art Gallery and City Gallery Wellington; she has undertaken prestigious artist residencies in Aotearoa, Asia, and Europe; and has been included in international biennales in Busan and Lyon.

Lee was born in Busan, Korea. She and her mother moved to New Zealand to join her brother when she was 11 years old. Her father stayed in Korea to work, and her mother has since returned to join him. Her work is often read for its references to themes of habitation, public space, migration, and everyday life informed by Lee’s transnational experiences.

She studied sculpture at Elam School of Fine Arts, graduating with an MFA in 2010. At Elam, she counted the artists Peter Robinson and P. Mule among her teachers, of whom she says “Peter taught me about the formal language of sculpture—materials and space. Mule took a more personal approach, drawing out my connection with music.” Lee began working with steel in 2010, through the uncle of a friend, who ran a metal doorknob factory called Drake and Wrigley. Lee’s engagement with metalwork and metalworkers has continued throughout her career, with many of her works relying on an understanding of utilitarian fabrication.

Classical music was the first art form Lee pursued, training as a cellist from the age of 7. She considered studying music until an injury and the return of her teacher to Korea forced her to consider other options. On a couple of occasions, she has explicitly incorporated this training into her work, playing the cello in front of Constrained Organism in 2011 and in 2012, playing her steel sculptures with a cello bow in a collaboration with sound artist James McCarthy.

But her experience as a musician has had a larger impact in shaping the way she sees her work as an interaction between artist, space, and the audience. In a conversation with curator Aaron Lister, she said: When I started making and exhibiting art, I initially struggled with the idea of showing premade objects in a gallery – it felt lifeless and didn’t allow for the type of engagement with the space and audience I desired. Music and performance guided me here. Some people read my work in pure compositional terms, seeing rhythm, structure, and so on. Some literally see musical notation, with linear forms as staves, and objects as notes. I agree, to a certain extent, but my interest in music is more closely linked to how string instruments are played physically, and the relationship between performer and composer. These ideas are central in terms of how I relate as an artist to form, space and audience.

Since 2013, Lee has taught at Elam School of Fine Arts. She helped establish Studio International in 2017. The group was initially a supportive network for international students, migrants, and the children of migrants at Elam, but has since expanded to become “a group for Elam students to connect and celebrate diversity.” Studio International became an important space to “forge community and a sense of belonging in a place that may have otherwise been isolating.

Lee lives in Tāmaki Makaurau and Seoul, and she continues to exhibit and make work internationally.