Ye Sun Lee
이예선
An artist who has spread countless people through art, using small grains of rice, each holding a different story, as objects
8 works
WORKS
ABOUT
Graduated from the College of Fine Arts, Ewha Womans University.
Artist’s Note
“How did you ever think of making people out of rice?” I am asked.
It was a time when a large family had too little food. My mother, embarrassed that she could not put much of a side dish on the table, made up for it with rice alone.
“The grains are alive! The rice came out so well.”
As a child I imagined each grain of rice standing up and moving,
and as an adult, looking at the rice we eat every day,
I thought, “Yes, let me make the grains of rice stand up and live!”
Every day I become the creator and make a person, from 30 g of freshly cooked rice, about the amount for one piece of sushi.
People made with effort, like a mother giving birth,
gain life in the artist’s imagination, take their set places,
and widen their territory so as to create endless energy.
Why not? The DNA of that body is rice. Rice is the best tonic.
What was God thinking, when He over-engineered, for thousands of years, bones that cannot even decay, for people who can use them for a hundred years at most?
I do not know about that manufacture, but what sustained life while it was lived was rice.
I trust the fierce DNA of rice.
Rice, supplied exclusively to the living and the dead (ritual rice)!
What are you?
A sacrifice of custom more binding than blood ties. A community of custom.
Rice is already a comprehensive ritual that includes the role of survival.
If a person is a small universe, then rice must have been life.
Awards
- Silver Prize, Korea Women’s Art Competition
- Special Selection, Korea Painting Competition
- Artist Selected in Korea (Art & Criticism)
- Van Gogh Prize, Global Small Picture Festival
- Selection, Korea Painting Competition
- Selection, Na Hae-seok Art Competition, and many others
Solo Exhibitions
- 2021 Human Heritage, Gallery MetaCanvas
- 2020 The Grains of Rice Are Alive, Gallery Yeolharu
- 2019 The Grains of Rice Are Alive, Asan Medical Center Gallery
- 2019 The Grains of Rice Are Alive, Hi Seoul Youth Hostel
Group Exhibitions
- 2021 Evergreen Artists Exhibition, is
- 2021 Ewha Womans University Nokmi Exhibition; Jisang Exhibition
- 2021 KIAF, COEX
- 2021 21st Hanseong Baekje Cultural Festival, Grand Baekje Exhibition
- 2021 Insadong People, “Sharing Happiness” Exhibition, Gallery La Mer
- 2021 Songpa Art Association, “Overcome 21,” Online Viewing Room
- 2021 Beyond The Darkness, K&P Gallery, New York
- 2021 Spread Spirit of Liberal, Art Dilotion Gallery
- 2021 Hwarang Art Fair, COEX
- 2021 Korean Fine Arts Association Seoul Branch Exhibition, Insa Art Plaza