Hayoon Jay Lee 이 하윤
Hayoon Jay Lee is a New York based interdisciplinary artist who is known for working with rice, rice-related motifs, and organic, biomorphic forms; this imagery is incorporated into paintings, sculptures, installations, performances, and videos. Her artwork strives to engage with the individual sensibilities of viewers, while encouraging reflection upon human dilemmas. Many of her works are motivated by feminist points of view which raise the awareness of spectators, and perhaps evoke questions.
Lee was born in Deagu, South Korea. She obtained a BFA in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2007, and an MFA degree from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at MICA in 2009. She received a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Award (2008) to support her graduate education. In the same year, she received a best-in-show distinction (2008) at the 14th International Exhibition at the SoHo 20 Gallery (juried by Chakaia Booker) in Chelsea, New York City.
After graduation, Lee moved to New York City. Over the years, she participated in many artist residency programs including the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Residency, (Provincetown, MA: 2009), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT: 2009), Sculpture Space (Utica, NY: 2011), Beijing Studio Center (Beijing, China: 2010), Dapu International Art Center (Daqing, China: 2011), Byrdcliffe Artist in Residence Program (Woodstock, NY: 2012), Gwangju Museum of Art (Gwangju, Korea: 2012), and Art Farm Artists Residence (Marquette, NE: 2016). Lee has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Korean Cultural Center in Beijing (Beijing, China: 2022), the Institute of Graphic Arts & Design at the Pedagogical University of Kraków, (Kraków, Poland: 2021), The Jamaica Art Center & King Manor Museum (Queens, NY: 2021), the Chinese American Art Council/Gallery 456 (New York, NY: 2019), Gwangju Museum of Art (Gwangju, Korea: 2019), Jeonbuk Museum of Art (Jeonbuk, Korea: 2017), Kim Man-duk Museum (Jeju, Korea: 2017), 99 Art Museum (Beijing, China: 2015), A.I.R Gallery (Brooklyn, NY: 2017), Lee Joong Seop Art Museum; Chang-dong Residency Art Gallery (Jeju, Korea: 2014), Okgwa Art Museum (Okgwa, Korea: 2013), Sculpture Space (Utica, NY: 2011), Hudson D. Gallery: Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA: 2010), Changsha Meixihu Exhibition Hall (Hunan, China: 2018), ArtWalk NY: Coalition for the Homeless (New York, NY 2018), The United Nations Gallery (New York, NY: 2017), Marian Graves Mugar Art Gallery, Colby-Sawyer College (NH, 2015), Daegu Contemporary Art Festival (Deagu, Korea, 2015), The Clock Tower / No Longer Empty (Long Island City, NY: 2013), Henan Museum (Zhengzhou, China: 2010). Recently, Lee’s work entered the collection of the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University and received a First Prize award at the exhibition National Association of Women Artists: Then & Now at the Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ.
Lee is scheduled to have a one-person exhibition at the Hollis Taggart Gallery in Chelsea, NYC in January 2023. Hayoon Jay Lee has a studio at the Elizabeth Foundation of the Arts in New York City.
Lee was born in Deagu, South Korea. She obtained a BFA in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2007, and an MFA degree from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at MICA in 2009. She received a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Award (2008) to support her graduate education. In the same year, she received a best-in-show distinction (2008) at the 14th International Exhibition at the SoHo 20 Gallery (juried by Chakaia Booker) in Chelsea, New York City.
After graduation, Lee moved to New York City. Over the years, she participated in many artist residency programs including the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Residency, (Provincetown, MA: 2009), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT: 2009), Sculpture Space (Utica, NY: 2011), Beijing Studio Center (Beijing, China: 2010), Dapu International Art Center (Daqing, China: 2011), Byrdcliffe Artist in Residence Program (Woodstock, NY: 2012), Gwangju Museum of Art (Gwangju, Korea: 2012), and Art Farm Artists Residence (Marquette, NE: 2016). Lee has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Korean Cultural Center in Beijing (Beijing, China: 2022), the Institute of Graphic Arts & Design at the Pedagogical University of Kraków, (Kraków, Poland: 2021), The Jamaica Art Center & King Manor Museum (Queens, NY: 2021), the Chinese American Art Council/Gallery 456 (New York, NY: 2019), Gwangju Museum of Art (Gwangju, Korea: 2019), Jeonbuk Museum of Art (Jeonbuk, Korea: 2017), Kim Man-duk Museum (Jeju, Korea: 2017), 99 Art Museum (Beijing, China: 2015), A.I.R Gallery (Brooklyn, NY: 2017), Lee Joong Seop Art Museum; Chang-dong Residency Art Gallery (Jeju, Korea: 2014), Okgwa Art Museum (Okgwa, Korea: 2013), Sculpture Space (Utica, NY: 2011), Hudson D. Gallery: Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA: 2010), Changsha Meixihu Exhibition Hall (Hunan, China: 2018), ArtWalk NY: Coalition for the Homeless (New York, NY 2018), The United Nations Gallery (New York, NY: 2017), Marian Graves Mugar Art Gallery, Colby-Sawyer College (NH, 2015), Daegu Contemporary Art Festival (Deagu, Korea, 2015), The Clock Tower / No Longer Empty (Long Island City, NY: 2013), Henan Museum (Zhengzhou, China: 2010). Recently, Lee’s work entered the collection of the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University and received a First Prize award at the exhibition National Association of Women Artists: Then & Now at the Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ.
Lee is scheduled to have a one-person exhibition at the Hollis Taggart Gallery in Chelsea, NYC in January 2023. Hayoon Jay Lee has a studio at the Elizabeth Foundation of the Arts in New York City.
Hayoon Jay Lee is a New York-based visual artist who explores the fundamental tension between indulgence and abnegation as it exists in terms of mind and body as well as on the level of social and political dynamics. Lee makes use of rice as object, motif, and metaphor: as the building block for civilizations and also as the basis for social inequities, rice allows her to create a visual echo reflecting points of conflict, oscillating between attraction and repulsion, between Orient and Occident, with the aim of inspiring self-reflection and ultimately producing conditions for healing and harmony. Lee’s paintings contain crowds of figures embedded in rice forms, emphasizing the symbiosis between rice and life, the countless, clearly defined grains suggesting infinite regeneration. In 3D works, rice is transformed into a pyramid or a grid of 3,000-handcrafted rice “bowls” that paradoxically speak of longing and fulfillment, not to mention Buddhist concepts of suffering and seeking Enlightenment. Her installations may also take the shape of mounds of rice occupying vast spaces underneath sacks of rice hanging in rows. These emotion-laden landscapes lay just beyond our reach; the extensive fields of rice seem to glow with their own inner light, yet each element of these fields is formed by a single grain tentatively holding onto its place in the larger macrocosmic setting. Through interactive performances, she hopes to open a dialog with audiences, to create a new community of strangers, with eyes open to a more textured, multi-layered reality.
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