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

Clearly, Lee is courting a "global" audience that has acquired a taste for Japanese computer games and animations rife with images of Godzilla, spaceships, girls in uniform, cute boys, cyborgs, etc. However, the psychic locales that these Euro/American singers and songs occupy, as well as their political and cultural connotations, differ greatly in Western and non-Western cultures. There is more than one collective past. To cross boundaries of time and space, as well as the socio-political borderlines between genders, Lee's work suggests, will take more than singing a tune or two in a self-contained karaoke capsule.

"Lee Bul: Live Forever, Act One" appeared at the San Francisco Art Institute [Apr. 6-May 19, 2001] with an accompanying brochure. "Lee Bul: Live Forever, Act Two" debuted at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia [Nov. 9, 2001-Jan. 5, 2002] before going to the Orange County Museum of Art [Jan. 26-Apr. 28, 2002]. The show is currently on view at the New Museum of Contemporary Art New York [May 17-July 7], and will later travel to the Power Plant, Toronto [Dec. 7, 2002-Mar. 2, 2003]; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [May 10-Aug. 17, 2003]; the University of Washington Henry Art Gallery, Seattle [Oct 12, 2003-Jan. 14, 2004]; and the Aspen Art Museum [dates pending]. The show is accompanied by two illustrated booklets.

Author: Frank Hoffmann is finishing a Ph.D. degree in Korean studies at Harvard University.