Mire Lee: Open Wound (Hyundai Commission)

Mire Lee is known for her visceral sculptures, which use kinetic, mechanised elements to invoke the tension between soft forms and rigid systems. Open Wound, her new site-specific work, is a monumental installation that re-imagines Tate Modern as an industrial womb. Reflecting on the building’s former life as a power station, Open Wound presents the Turbine Hall as a living factory, finding human dreams and desires in sprawling mechanical systems. 

Lee populates the space with ‘skins’, fabric sculptures that hang from the ceiling on metal chains. A motorised turbine slowly spins, discharging a viscous liquid from flesh-like silicone tentacles into a large tray. Throughout the exhibition, the skins are moved by technicians to harden on nearby racks before being hauled into the air. Over time they accumulate, birthed from the body of the building while appearing to shed from the ceiling above. For Lee, the complex histories of industry are awe-inspiring in their violence and scale. Her work considers the physical and emotional labour of people living in times of precarity and decline, ‘witnessing a human, an individual life, getting caught in a larger system’. 

In this book, two inspiring new essays and a conversation between the artist and the curators cast light on the full range of Lee’s artistic influences and unique point of view. Together they serve as an introduction to one of today’s most intriguing and original contemporary artists.