Denver artist Sammy Seung-min Lee’s work has always been about her journey toward understanding self-identity — or the impossibility of that task for so many people who experience the privilege and pain of being caught between cultures.
She moved to the United States from Korea more than three decades ago, when she was just 16, alone and without family. So many of the objects she has exhibited here have documented that emotional process of leaving close relatives behind, changing her name, connecting with an unfamiliar country, starting her own new family.
How Korean is she? How American? She has examined that by making art that is both “playful and poignant,” as the curator Leilani Lynch explains in the text accompanying Lee’s new solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Indeed, Lee’s work tends to be rich, thought-provoking, and hyper-personal, but fully engaging in her use of clever materials and the occasional laugh-out-loud punchline.
The exhibition, titled “Becoming Motherland,” shows Lee doing her life’s work on overdrive. In 2023, she was named a Fulbright Scholar, which enabled her to spend a year in Korea, sleeping, eating, recreating, working and, along the way, turning her abstract memories of living there into something more concrete and direct (and sometimes overwhelming). Many of the pieces in this show were made after that time.
Being so close to her source material has inspired a more visceral type of work from Lee. In the past, her pieces have often felt dreamy and ephemeral. She is probably best-known for a series of works that use a special paper-casting technique to create a sort of monochromatic skin that captures three-dimensional impressions of things like suitcases or home furnishings. They evoke memories that are frozen in time, though fragile and a bit difficult to fully experience or understand.
There are some of those works in “Becoming Motherland,” but the focus is on a more present tense: the bustling South Korea of today, with flashing electronic signs, busy flea markets and food stalls and a lot of karaoke influencing the work. It is more immediate, and sometimes over the top.
Take, for example, “Complex Silence,” which takes the form of a giant microphone placed in the center of a large gallery on the MCA’s first floor. Made of styrofoam and cardboard, the piece towers over museum visitors.
Microphones are a tool for speaking out loud, or singing, before a crowd, and Lee uses the object as a symbol of her own desire to speak and be understood, even when she is confused by competing cultures and unsure of her own voice. The objects are universal, but Lee positions the one she made distinctly in Korea. To that end, she has coated it in traditional Korean mulberry paper, and its cord resembles a long braid of dark-shaded human hair.
The microphone emits a constant sound that is mixed together from a cacophony of sonic moments Lee recorded on her trip, on subways, in the streets and markets, in her studio. It is all at once familiar and foreign.
Or, for another example, the latest version of Lee’s ongoing “Dumpling Diaspora,” a ceramic project that has her connecting with groups of people from different parts of the Asian diaspora in the U.S. and elsewhere. They get together and make their own clay replicas of the stuffed noodle dish that is popular across the continents.
The variety of regional dumplings — sometimes they take the form of wontons, gyoza or mandu — makes for a journey that demonstrates both the diversity and overlapping ideas of various cultures. The size of the piece on the MCA’s gallery wall (there must be hundreds of them in different shapes and shades) shows how vast these countries are and how complex memories of them can be.
Other pieces are equally larger-than-life, and sometimes more intimate. “Accolade” consists of scores of hwahwan, brightly-colored ribbons and artificial flowers that are given as commemorative gifts in Korea on the occasions of graduations or funerals. They are often inscribed with messages specific to the occasions at hand.
But Lee assembles them in multitudes and hangs them into a large installation taking up a full gallery wall. She replaces the usual condolences and congratulations with text of her anglicized name “Sammy” translated into versions of Korean. The piece, fabricated from curtain panels, underscores — and perhaps celebrates — cultural duality.
There are also exaggerated, multimedia elements in the show that are both surprising and on-point. Riding on buses and trains in Seoul, Lee encountered electronic signs instructing riders on the etiquette of using public transportation. It reminded Lee of her own mother’s advice on how to behave in public when she was a child.
She translated that into works such as “Nagging,” which uses similar LED message boards but substitutes her mother’s parental advice for the digital, public pronouncements that usually appear on these moving vehicles. By integrating these personal messages into the scene, Lee gives viewers a light moment to enjoy on her journey, while getting quite literal with the exhibition’s title word of “motherland.”
There are so many exhibits in contemporary museums these days exploring identity — probably too many in that they all can seem to be the same story, only told through different characters who have relocated to different places and for a multitude of reasons. We live in a post-multicultural age now, and so many of us have narratives we are compelled to tell. It can be a bit much for museum-goers who have seen this movie again and again.
But it is not the story as much as it is the telling of the story that sets these shows apart. If they do not tap collective truths, they come off as self-indulgent, and lack singularity and interest.
But if they do connect bigger dots, everyone can relate to the pushes and pulls that mark their own behavior and sensibilities. That goes beyond national identity and into many facets of everyday life — who are we, who do we want to be, how much control do we even have over that, and how much is the product of the physical and emotional histories we have experienced.
By pulling so many threads together thoughtfully — by making both the “now” and “then” of everyday experiences, from travel to diet to motherhood, feel so rich and real — “Becoming Motherland” succeeds as a journey anyone can accompany in awe and comfort.
Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in fine arts.
IF YOU GO
Sammy Seung-min Lee’s “Becoming Motherland” continues through July 5 at the MCA Denver, 1485 Delgany St. Info: 303−298−7554 or mcadenver.org.
