In Conversation: Ahreum Lee
Interview (text)
Published Feb 10, 2022
Welcome word from the artistic director of ELEKTRA
Alain Thibault: The 5th International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN) is the third to be presented at Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal. This year, we had East Asia as our guest region. I worked in collaboration with the Korean curator Doo Eun Choi.
In the very particular context of the current pandemic, it was difficult to transport physical works. We therefore had to rethink the programming by including more local artists. We adapted and, despite everything, we managed to present a program that we are proud of.
In the biennials produced by ELEKTRA, we bring together artists from all over the world and from different backgrounds. Some artists identify with digital art, while others have a more visual art practice. We like to bring them together under the same theme and create links between these different approaches.
I would end by saying that we are living a technological transition that is driven by digital technologies. One of the major effects of this pandemic has been to accelerate the transition that, for a decade now, has been pushing us to rethink the way we create and exhibit art.
Interview
Lise Fraïssé: Can you explain the piece that you presented at the BIAN?
Ahreum Lee: I presented a piece called I+Care. It is a project that imitates the advertisements and reproduces the visual identity of IKEA. I also use the assembly instructions, but here they are used to build medical equipment and a personal care kit for a house in the near future. I+Care is a kind of speculative design that I have imagined to explore how we might use medical technology in the near future.
L.F: What was the starting point of the project?
A.L: Actually, my work often starts from my smallest thoughts or my jokes, and sometimes from science fiction movies. Usually in science fiction there is a huge gap between the poor and the rich. The poor are the one using the type of really obsolete technologies that have been trashed away from the rich because they have accessibility to hi-tech technologies. I was trying to imagine my social status in the near future and joked that I would probably be the one buying care kit technologies at IKEA. That was the start of this project.
L.F: In your work you associate the DIY culture with the biomedical world. How did you come up with this idea?
A.L: I am interested in technologies that are being used in daily life. For example, in Hopping for hope, the hopscotch peace, it is about Google Maps and GPS tracking. I also did a work in which I’m referring to Siri, this AI voice that some of us are using every single day. I like to examine how we interact with those technologies and how those daily repetitions change our perspectives. Biotechnologies have already entered our daily lives - people are analyzing their sleep, are using the Apple watch and so on. So exploring this idea of biotechnologies coming into our daily lives is in the continuity of topics that I am researching.
Alain Thibault: Are you criticizing the fact that today companies like IKEA entrust the work to customers by asking them to build their own furniture?
A.L: Well when I started the project I did research about shadow work [...] I am a pro DIY. But at the same time, DIY culture is being used by these companies as a cost-cutting measure strategy. That is why, for example, in I+Care you will find an instruction manual showing you how to build an MRI machine by yourself. There is also the idea that work and productivity are important values in our capitalist society. They generate a lot of anxiety. For example, sometimes I feel like I didn’t do anything, even though I was busy all day keeping up on social media, changing passwords, etc… but those things are not seen by society as something valuable. So, at the end, I end up feeling really busy and tired, and at the same time I feel like I didn't do any work. This is a very capitalistic way of thinking.
L.F: You talk about the way in which these capitalist values extend to the question of health, but also, more broadly, to the domain of self-care. The I+Care yoga session that you created and performed at Darling Foundry highlights this aspect.
A.L: [...] Yes, I built a manual and a performance that recreated a yoga session. There was a yoga instructor and participants that were doing yoga to take care of themselves. The workshop was accompanied by the I+Care fake company installation set. I was reading all those materials that I found in my research about shadow work and how self-care is commercialized, capitalized and imposed on individuals. I wanted to show that yoga [as a form of self-care] has been instrumentalized.
L.F: This project unfolds through several other projects, involving the public in a variety of ways. We just evoked the yoga session, but I guess more generally the participative and playful aspects are really present in your body of work.
A.L: There is definitely a playful aspect that I can find participatory. I used to play for the audience to get close to my work. There could be a kind of disconnect between my work and the audience. I think it's because I'm from Korea and I use a lot of cultural references that not many people can understand. [...] It all affects how my work is received. It's really hard to put all these things in a text, so I tried to use playfulness to invite people into the issues I'm addressing. [...] I’m studying games right now because playfulness is an important part of my approach. And there are some web games, like very simple games, that I made for my work that’s kind of a continuation from what I’m interested in.
L.F: At the end of the I+Care manual there is also a collection of texts about self-care that you curated. What is the history behind those texts? How did you discuss them?
A.L: I am very proud of my publication. I wrote some of the texts myself, but there are also other writers. The publication is the last thing that I did on the I+Care project. I have been thinking that it would be nice to have texts from other authors not only talking about my work but also about how they see the issues that my work engages with. Brigit Mosres is an artist based in Toronto. Her work is about anxiety, a contemporary issue that we all have. There is a performance script by her in it. My friend Didi wrote a short sci-fi fiction about someone going through all the bureaucracy of a so-called ICare company, something really Kafkaesque. There is also a poem from another author. It opened a lot of perspectives about those issues.
L.F: What are your next projects?
A.L: Right now I am exhibiting in London, Ontario. I will have another exhibit this year in Montreal. At Eastern Bloc, I have a project called My mother is Data, and I will be doing a residency at Sporobaol in art games.
About Ahreum Lee
Ahreum Lee is a multimedia artist and musician from Seoul, South Korea, currently based in Montreal. She began her career as the co-founder and frontwoman of experimental art-rock band Juck Juck Grunzie. After spending nearly a decade producing records and touring internationally, she extended her practice into video and multimedia installation work.
Ahreum Lee graduated from the MFA Studio Art program at Concordia University. She exhibited/performed her works at Fonderie Darling (Montreal, Canada), Ada x (Montreal, Canada), Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Montreal, Canada), as well as Third Shift Festival (Saint John, Canada), Axis Lab (Chicago, United States) and the 5th International Digital Art Biennale at Arsenal Contemporain Art Montreal. She participated in the Emerging BAiR program at Banff Art centre in 2020 and the Impression Residency program at Musée des beaux-arts à Montréal in 2021. She is an active member of the QO collective.
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