Lee Bul: cyborgs and karaoke: a traveling exhibition now at the New Museum in New York, highlights the recent karaoke-based work of a Korean artist known for her high-tech feminism and "global" fusions of culture

Art in America, May, 2002 by Frank Hoffmann

Through her interventionist performances, her cyborg and monster sculptures, and now her karaoke installations, Lee Bul (b. 1964) has lately made an international name for herself. The Seoul-based artist has participated, for example, in group exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Walker Art Center, the Guggenheim Museum SoHo (where she was a 1998 Hugo Boss Prize finalist), and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In 1999, she was one of two artists who showed in the Korean pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where she received an "honorable mention" from the jury. Her work also appeared in the Seventh Istanbul Biennial last fall. Little wonder, then, that she is cited by many observers abroad as today's best-known Korean artist (not counting longtime celebrity Nam June Paik). But Lee's reputation is not uncontested. In her homeland, critics have occasionally charged her with commercial sensationalism or with presenting herself as a "Korean feminist" overseas while neglecting Korea's own art scene--a criticism she has tried to defuse through several recent shows at home.

The daughter of a longtime left-wing political dissident, Lee began her artistic career in the late 1980s, when the country was finally on the road to democratization and the vibrant period of political Minjung art was coming to an end. Feminism and the queer movement were latecomers to South Korea, starting to emerge only at the end of the `80s. Suddenly introduced into a society still preoccupied with Confucian mores, they gave rise by the mid-`90s to abundant Cindy Shermanesque imagery and a drive toward decidedly feminist works--as seen, for example, in the scissors installations of Ahn Pil Yun. Lee at first shocked her audiences with soft sculptures resembling limbs and viscera--some of them, in wearable form, donned by the artist in places like Seoul's Kimpo Airport or the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. Later, working in various mediums, she produced giant sculptures of buttocks, breasts and vaginas. Her provocative, interactive "Hydra" installation series of the late `90s--involving inflatable vinyl forms printed with the photo-transfer image of Lee decked out in a traditional robe, strap-on baby dolls and sexy space-hooker garb (black knee-high boots and fishnet stockings on legs splayed toward the viewer)--skillfully manipulated cultural cliches, simultaneously spoofing Western images of the exotic Asian woman and expectations of how Eastern feminist art should look.

Throughout the late `90s, Lee's principal theme remained the human body and technology--or, more specifically, women and high tech. Her various series of monsters and cyborgs (cyber organisms)--weird but elegant sculptures made of silicone and white porcelain that feature fragmented, often headless, one-legged and one-armed bodies with the voluptuous proportions typical of Western women as depicted in sexually loaded Japanese comics and animation--were successfully exhibited around the world. Then, about 1999, Lee shifted her interest again and began working on various karaoke-related projects.

Last spring's exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was Lee's first major solo show in the United States. An earlier attempt, at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1997, ended as an unfinished project when Majestic Splendor, her installation incorporating French perfume and bags of decomposing fish (reputedly a commentary on conventional notions of femininity), was removed by museum staff members, who could not endure the stench.

This time there were no putrid fish or noxious fumes. One can't go wrong, it seems, with karaoke--that innocuous pastime of imitating pop stars by singing aloud, with the help of video-projected lyrics, to the music track of prerecorded songs. Lee had four karaoke-based solo shows in 2001--in Vienna, Tokyo, San Francisco and Philadelphia. The fourth, the "Act Two" sequel to her SFAI project, remained on view at the Fabric Workshop and Museum until early 2002, then traveled to the Orange County Museum of Art, and is now installed at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York as part of a continuing U.S. tour.

Lee's new subject has wide but usually culture-specific appeal. From Tokyo to Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, karaoke has over the past decade become a huge success story in the Asian entertainment business. According to the Financial Times (Aug. 8, 2001), a Malaysian senator even suggested last year that "local authorities set up karaoke lounges and cybercafes on a big scale ... to attract youths to spend their free time in a useful way." They could also learn the Koran through such outlets, he said. Koreans and Korean-Americans of all ages are no less fascinated with karaoke. In Korea the noraebang (karaoke room) is beaten in popularity only by PC-bang (PC station). Microchips and the Internet play a significantly more prominent role in Korean leisure activities than they do in the U.S., as high tech is utilized for all sorts of gadgets and games Americans have not even heard of. While Americans sit alone in front of their computer monitors, Asians enjoy playing games and singing songs, together. A bit of a stereotype? Maybe, but just a bit, really, as the vast number of Asian karaoke venues attests.