a chat with kang seung lee

Artist's portrait by Mark Blower.

Kang Seung Lee (born in 1978, South Korea) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. His work frequently engages the legacy of transnational queer histories, particularly as they intersect with art history. Lee’s work has been included in international exhibitions such as the 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Made in LA at Hammer Museum (2023); New Museum Triennial (2021); and Gwangju Biennale (2021). He also participated in documenta fifteen (2022) invited by Jatiwangi Art Factory. Selected recent exhibitions were held at: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2023); Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2023); de Appel, Amsterdam (2023); Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles (2023); Gallery Hyundai, Seoul (2021); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2021, 2017, 2016). 

LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: You left South Korea in the early 2000s and lived in Australia, the Middle East, India, and Mexico before settling in Los Angeles. How have these diverse cultures influenced your work and research? 

KANG SEUNG LEE: I did not make art seriously until I was in my 30s. Looking back, I was more interested in living with art, and there were many other ways to do it. However, spending time in different parts of the world certainly shaped me as a person since I became more aware of different cultures and histories, how they are constructed, and how the context of my work may change as I move around, going back and forth between Korea and elsewhere. I learned that queer histories from these places are very much connected as much as they look disparate, and I became interested in transnational histories, which have been influential in my work. 

Kang Seung Lee, installation views, Untitled (Constellation), the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia: Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and Mexico City. Photos by Mark Blower.

LŠ: You mentioned in our previous conversation that you have a very tight-knit community in LA. How did you first connect with different artists and spaces there? Is there an artist mentor who was particularly influential in your settling in LA? 

KSL: In 2013, I was introduced to Young Chung, founder of Commonwealth and Council Gallery. At that time, Commonwealth and Council was an artist-run space, and Young had a singular voice in the art he was showing. Each exhibition was well-thought-out, experimental, diverse, and often highly curated, championing many artists from Asian, Latinx, and Black communities in Los Angeles. It was also intergenerational. I quickly became part of the community and got to know a group of incredible artists, such as Yong Soon Min, Gala Porras-Kim, Patricia Fernandez, Julie Tolentino, and Young Joon Kwak, to name a few. I joined the roster as the space transitioned to a commercial gallery about 6-7 years ago. 

Another hugely influential person is Leslie Dick, my teacher and mentor from CalArts. We became close friends after I graduated from the school. She is an incredible feminist artist, writer, editor, and educator in Los Angeles and beyond. Still, I think her most important practice is her conversations through studio visits and life-long friendships. I learned from her how to not be afraid of expressing emotions and feelings in my work while remaining conceptually driven. Leslie now lives in New Haven and teaches at Yale, but she is still someone I reach out to to share new ideas, experiences, and projects.

LŠ: Besides archives, you mentioned magazines as vital in your early years of research. Which magazines were formative for you, and who do you consider your early mentors? What lessons did they impart to you? 

KSL: Perhaps it's worth mentioning my love-hate relationship with Sunday Seoul, a weekly tabloid magazine published in Korea between 1968 and 1991. It featured celebrity pin-ups, gossip, sensational photos and articles. The magazine had a section titled Unbelievable things in the world, roughly translated, and it covered much about queer and transgender people, HIV/AIDS, etc. I remember reading about an American lesbian couple who had a baby together. Although lots of those articles were erroneously written, it gave some information about the queer people, trans people, people who were dying from AIDS during the time, etc. The collection of Sunday Seoul ironically became important traces of these living queer experiences. 

Later in the 1990s, queer magazines, such as BUDDY and GET, started to appear and covered more political issues from the community. Chae-yoon Hahn, publisher and editor of BUDDY, who also directed the Seoul Queer Cultural Festival for many years, was a pivotal figure. She is a co-founder of QueerArch (aka Korea Queer Archive), a public queer archive based in Seoul that is rooted in feminist and transgender activism. While researching at QueerArch around 2016-2017, I strongly desired to share the materials with a larger audience. Their archivist Ruin and I shared the desire and collaborated on multiple events and exhibitions in the following years. 

LŠ: Your work pays special attention to embroidery. Why did you choose this craft, and who introduced you to different techniques? Which embroidery techniques do you find most intriguing and why? Are there techniques you still want to learn?

KSL: I can come up with many reasons I chose to embroider, but honestly, it happened organically since I was always obsessed with craft and labored processes. Pain and pleasure are so close to each other, right? The repetitive labor, long hours of thinking and daydreaming while embroidering, and the feeling of accomplishment when the work is done are all very seductive. 

I have used many techniques, all pretty much self-taught, but the embroidery I do these days is simple, like drawing lines with antique 24K gold threads. I often use sambe, a hand-loomed Korean hemp textile traditionally used in funeral shrouds, thinking about the process of mourning. I am generally interested in ancient materials that go beyond one cycle of human life. 

Embroidery is a big part of my work, but perhaps it's important to mention that I make multidisciplinary projects that include drawings, paintings, moving images, sound, etc. Most of my research is about queer artists and cultural figures who are no longer with us, hence I call it collaborating with the dead, and in some ways, my work is an attempt to embody the legacy of their lives and works. My labor becomes visible to the viewers through lines of embroidery and graphite drawings within the projects. 

For new techniques, I would love to learn how to weave using jacquard looms if there's time and opportunity. 

Kang Seung Lee, installation view, 2023-2024, Who will care for our caretakers, MMCA (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), Seoul. Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and Mexico City. Photo courtesy of MMCA, Seoul.

Detail image, Untitled (Jealousy is my power, Gi Hyeong-do),2023. Antique 24K gold thread on sambe, wood, brass nails. Approx. 64.5 x 14 in (164 x 35.5 cm). Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and Mexico City. Photo by Paul Salveson.

Detail image, Untitled (Lázaro, José Leonilson, 1993), 2023. Sambe, antique 24K gold thread, coat hanger. Approx. 75 x 27 x 3 in (191 x 69 x 8 cm). Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and Mexico City. Photo by Paul Salveson.

LŠ: We share a love for fashion history, and you have expressed interest in the 18th century and early 20th century. What questions from these periods do you find most challenging and why?Are there specific works by designers from these periods that inspire you? Which books on fashion history would you recommend?

KSL: While I am not an expert, I am interested in fashion history from the 18th-century “macaroni" to Alexander Mcqueen. Perhaps it's the epicene and androgynous manner that attracts me more than anything else. I highly recommend Peter McNeil's books such as, Pretty Gentlemen and Men's Fashion Reader. 

LŠ: You also work as a curator. Which exhibitions hold a special place for you, and why? How do you translate your artistic practice into your curatorial work?

KSL: I do not identify as a curator, but most of my projects are somewhat curatorial because many works of mine, especially drawings, have references to artworks made by other queer artists, particularly from a generation intensely affected by the AIDS epidemic. I sometimes include works by other artists within my exhibition as well. The thought behind the decision is that I have always understood that our artmaking is influenced by people who came before us and are around us, and the genealogy becomes apparent through collaborations like this. 

One important exhibition to me was QueerArch (2019) that I organized with Jin Kwon, curator of Seoul Museum of Art. We moved about two-thirds of the materials from the archive QueerArch to a storefront artist-run space, Hajungjigu, in Seoul. It was their first time to share the collection with the public that way. We invited a young group of local queer artists and asked them to make new works after doing their research at the archive. During the show run, archivist Ruin used the exhibition space as their office and gave walkthroughs every other day, and we organized multiple lectures and talks. It was highly collaborative, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational. It really gave us the possibility of bringing the Korean queer history to the present and reimagining the future together. 

Photos of QueerArch, 2019, Installation views, Hapjungjigu, Seoul. Courtesy of Hapjungjigu, Seoul, and apexart, New York. Photos by Cheolki Hong.