MIRE LEE:
OPEN WOUND
Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound installed in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, 2024. Photo Lucy Green c Tate
WHAT? Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound
WHERE? Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
WHEN? Now until 16th March 2025. Free to view
WHY GO? To be bewitched. Who needs a Halloween party, when you can walk on the wild side in the Turbine Hall and experience a fright fest for free?
This, the ninth installation in the vast cavernous hall is as eerie as it gets. South Korean artist Lee has created a dystopian show that chimes with the current state of “living in a world affected by precarity and decline”.
If all that sounds a tad gloomy, it is, so pre-warn the youngsters although they might be up for spooky hanging 'skins' rather more enthusiastically than you!
Lee has reimagined the Turbine hall as the inside of a body attempting to reflect the emotional and physical impact of today’s lifestyle.
She has created an exhibition of fluttering fabric sculptures around a central motorised wheel, which harks back to the hall’s original function as an industrial Power Station.
Thespians might well recall images of ghostly Miss Havisham wandering through the raggedy sculptures at night. Apparently they shed and multiply and it’s estimated that by the end of the show, there will have been 16,2025 fabric-skins shed.
Atmospheric it is, and definitely more of a wintery exhibition; come Spring the hall will be more than ready for a recharge. Like all surreal installations, it’s an influencer's dream and will undoubtedly provoke plenty of spirited Halloween clicks.
IN THE KNOW Lee is the youngest artist ever commissioned to create for the prestigious Turbine Hall. Just in her mid-30’s, with a cult following, Lee lives between Seoul and Amsterdam. Marvelling at the Halls’ industrial history, her aim was to reactivate its energy.
She replicates the pulley system used by coal miners as a way of hoisting her fabric ‘skin’ sculptures. It blurs the boundary between art and machinery and certainly provides a bizarre take on what constitutes modern art today.