Seven Sisters (2018–23)

Seven Sisters, 2018, 5.75 x 12.47 x 45.6 feet, Missing Merope, solo exhibition, Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles, 2023, curated by Rachel Jans, photo: Peter Holzhauer
Read exhibition essay.

Missing Merope
by Rachel Jans
Essay published in a brochure on the occasion of the artist’s KAFA award solo exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, 2023

Mirae kh RHEE is an interdisciplinary artist who uses a wide range of media, including sculpture, video, performance, new technologies, photography, painting, and drawing to explore the notion of belonging and her own place in the world. This approach frequently opens onto the complex roles of nation, community, culture, and gender in the formation of identity. Read more.

Korean translation by Joy S. Kim
이미래 (Mirae kh RHEE/李未來)는 조각, 비디오, 퍼포먼스, 새로운 기술, 사진, 회화, 삽화 등의 다양한 매체를 통해서 소속감 (belonging)이라는 개념과 이세상에서 작가 자신의 위치를 고려하고 추구하는 학제간 예술가 (interdisciplinary artist)이다. 이러한 접근방법은 인간의 정체성 형성과정에서 국가, 공동체, 문화, 그리고 성별 (gender)이 가지는 역할이라는 더 복잡하고 난해한 문제를 빈번히 야기시킨다.
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Missing Merope, solo exhibition, Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles, 2023, curated by Rachel Jans, photo: Peter Holzhauer

Seven Sisters and the Lotus of Life, 2019, bamboo bolsters, extended sports visors, LED lights, circa 165.1 x 80 x 80cm, Mourning Becomes Electra, Incheon Art Platform, South Korea, 2019, photo: Michael Hurt

Seven Sisters and the Lost Daughter, 2019, bamboo bolsters, extended sports visors, LED lights, 4m x 5,25m x 3,5m, exhibition view: Sitting Circles, Galerie Wedding, Berlin 2019, curated by Marie-Christin Lender as part of Soft Solidarity, conceptualized by Nataša Ilić and Solvej Helweg Ovesen, photo: Aleks Slota

Seven Sisters, 2018, bamboo bolsters, extended sports visors, LED lights, 3.5 x 2.94 x 2.67 m, Past Persephone, solo exhibition, Meanwhile.Elsewhere, a project from Galerie Irrgang, Berlin 2019, curated by Tobias Wachter photo: Marcelina Wellmer

Seven Sisters, 2018, bamboo bolsters, extended sports visors, LED lights, circa 2.3 x 2 x 1m, MuEon Daeon, Korea Verband, Berlin, 2018, photo: Aleks Slota

With the aim of a portrayal of femininity that is female centered and free of lookism, RHEE’s installation Seven Sisters refers to inventions that were created in order to control the female body or service the male body. This memorial installation pays tribute to women, who have been oppressed, sexually abused, and/or discriminated against because of a global patriarchal misogyny, especially the comfort women who were forced into sexual slavery during the Second World War at the time of Japanese occupation.

In another iteration of the series Seven SistersSeven Sisters and the Lotus of Life, the bamboo wives are bound together in a shape that is reminiscent of the lotus flower shape visible in Buddhist temples. The center bamboo wife is multi-colored, while the bamboo wives who make up the six petals are white. The work also refers to the flower of life, a basic sacred geometric shape composed of multiple evenly-spaced, overlapping circles arranged in a flower-like pattern with six-fold symmetry like a hexagon. It is said to contain ancient religious value depicting the fundamental forms of space and time.

“Having been born in one country, grown up in another, and being based in yet another country nowadays, while moving freely between them, [the artist] creates connections – between continents and regional cultural peculiarities, between the past and the present, between the self and the other. The cautious but radical transformation of cultural objects crosses, in a lively debate, the exploration of her own identity and cultural origin, and issues such as gender, migration and global injustice. Proceeding from mythology, Seven Sisters and the Lost Daughter recalls all the forgotten, lost, missing women, girls, mothers, daughters. The bamboo wife, a traditional household item in mostly Asian countries, are objects that are embraced while sleeping in order to enable a cooling process by circulating fresh air that reaches the body. RHEE equips these intimate items with sports visors designed for the modern Korean woman, which serve to protect her from UV radiation in order to preserve a fair complexion – a sign of youthfulness and belonging to a higher social class. Illuminated from the inside, they form a constellation of stars in the darkness that has already been illustrated on the Nebra Sky Disk and can still be seen with the naked eye in the night sky.”
– Marie-Christin Lender, curator, Galerie Wedding

Exhibitions
2023 Missing Merope, solo exhibition, Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles, curated by Rachel Jans
2021 Facing South Korea, Meinblau Projektraum, Berlin, curated by Bernhard Draz
2019 Mourning Becomes Electra, solo exhibition,Warehouse Gallery, Incheon Art Platform, Korea 2019
2019, Sitting Circles, Galerie Wedding, Berlin, curated by Marie-Christin Lender
2019, Past Persephone, solo exhibition, Meanwhile.Elsewhere, a project from Galerie Irrgang, Berlin, curated by Tobias Wachter
2018, MuEon Daeon, two person exhibition, Korea Verband, Berlin, curated by Nataly Han
2018, Archipelago, Reinbeckhallen, Berlin, Goldrausch Künstlerinnen Projekt
2018, Trostlose Trostfrauen, rk-Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst im Ratskeller, Berlin 2018, curated by Kwang Lee

Public/Notable Collections
San Diego Museum of Art, CA, USA
Museum of Comfort Women, Korea Verband, Berlin, Germany