Maia Ruth Lee
b. 1983, Busan, South Korea
lives in Salida, CO
Born in Busan, South Korea, Maia Ruth Lee arrived in New York City in 2011 after living between Kathmandu and Seoul. Deeply informed by questions surrounding the self in times of dispersion, mobility, and rootlessness, Lee's multidisciplinary practice spans photography, video, painting, and sculpture. Using translation as an apparatus, Lee transmutes her works between mediums, connecting themes of borders, community, and language with embodiments of carriers, loss, and self-preservation through process and materials. Relocating to Salida, Colorado in 2020 influenced much of Lee's recent work—the expanded space of her new setting is evident in the shifted practice. Language as a mechanism in its ability and failure to shape and give account to experiences, memories, and emotions has been a major thread in Lee’s work. As for those whose lives are precarious and unrooted, maps, atlases, and banners become a device that calls to mind their life of movement, and often, loss. Rather than lingering in futility and loss, Lee opens up a passage way, forging new lexicons that give form to lives of transience and their stories, beyond immediate and accepted forms of legibility and comprehension.
Maia Ruth Lee has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (CO); Tina Kim Gallery (NY); François Ghebaly Gallery (LA); and Jack Hanley Gallery (NY). Lee has participated in numerous group exhibitions hosted by institutions including the Aspen Art Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; Fotografiska Museum; Helena Anrather Gallery; CANADA gallery; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Overduin & Co. Gallery; Roberts & Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles; and Gio Marconi Gallery in Milan. Lee attended Hongik University in Seoul and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver. Lee was the recipient of the Gold Art Prize in 2021 and the Rema Hort Mann grant in 2017. Her work is held in the public collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Photo: Peter Sutherland
