– Julia Kristeva, Black Sun (1987; trans. by Leon S. Roudiez, 1989)
Mire Lee frequently turns to industrial materials and machinery to mine for waste and unexpected byproducts. In her installations and sculptures, there are low-fi motor-driven pumps, concrete mixers, PVC tubing, and hand-grafted silicon abscesses, which merge into experimental assemblages. Evoking a postindustrial dissolution between machines and organisms, her kinetic installations rely on circulatory systems that mimic the homeostatic process of organs. In an algorithmic world, where questions of pleasure and consumption habits are increasingly quantifiable and aligned into predictive patterns of regulated behavior, there is something primordial in the involuntary movements and behavior of Lee’s deconstructed automatons.
Following the opening of Lee’s exhibition “Black Sun” at the New Museum in New York in June, Billy Tang, director of Hong Kong’s nonprofit Para Site, spoke with Lee about her exhibition, the material inspirations she has taken in recent years—from clay to fabrics—and the social and cultural practices from which she draws her influence.
Billy Tang Your new installation in New York features a series of kinetic sculpture and fabric works, the inspiration for which comes from Julia Kristeva’s 1987 study of depression and melancholia, Black Sun (1987). How did you come across this book and what about it inspired you to make this new body of work?
Mire Lee In , Kristeva talks
