During the
course of an exhibition, the fish in
Majestic Splendor are left to undergo
an inexorable process of decay;
and as the inescapable odor permeates
the exhibition space, the initial visual
allure is contravened by a reflexive
feeling of repulsion. Finally, what
remains of the work is the useless
glitter of cheap, man-made ornaments,
the fish having undergone a "deconstruction"
exposing the skeletal framework of their
composition. First shown in a 1991 group
exhibition in Korea, Majestic Splendor
was subsequently presented at venues
throughout the world, including
the Asia-Pacific Triennial in 1993,
the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
in the spring of 1997, and later
that same year, the Lyon Biennale and
The Power Plant in Toronto.
Not only did this work bring international
recognition to the artist, but it introduced
the element of smell into a system of
representation which, at least since
the Renaissance, has been dominated
by visual images. By pushing the aesthetic
boundaries to include the olfactory
dimension, Lee sought to produce a more
complex intermingling of sensuous experiences
-a kind of synaesthesia that was
advocated by Baudelaire but increasingly
banished, since the late 19th century,
from the austere modernist realm of
artistic expression. As the artist has
said, "What I'm trying to
examine is the idea of representation
and its relationship to the privileging
of vision as the dominant aesthetic
principle . . . I'm trying to reverse
the traditional strategies of art, to
disturb the supreme position of the
image." Shortlisted for the
Hugo Boss Prize in 1998, Lee Bul unveiled
a new work, a set of four white cyborg
sculptures, for the exhibition
of the finalists at the Guggenheim Museum.
Taking her cue from the writings
of feminist theorist Donna Haraway,
"A Cyborg Manifesto" in particular,
the artist drew upon the metaphor
of the cyborg, as well as its various
manifestations in the popular imagination,
to continue her investigation into the
cultural constructions of femininity.
Made of silicone, a material
used in medical enhancement and reconstruction
of the human body, Lee's cyborgs
reference both the imagery of Japanese
and Korean animations as well as iconic
art-historical feminine poses
- that of the Pieta or Botticelli's
The Birth of Venus, for example. But
such allusions to official representations
of feminine beauty and sexuality are
contradicted by the physical aberration
of missing limbs and organs. These are
imperfect, incomplete bodies that
question the teleological impulse behind
our faith in technological perfection.
The artist notes with fascination
that, within the image and the trope
of the cyborg that have
become increasingly prevalent in Asian
animations, there is an ambiguous mixture
of superhuman power, girlish vulnerability,
and dystopian violence. Another prominent
characteristic of these
futuristic heroines is that they are
often controlled by a male master,
typically a young boy. Thus a part of
the critical strategy in creating her
cyborgs, Lee says, is to effect
an intervention against a recursion
of ideologies that simply reinforce
a masculine vision beneath the
high-tech gloss of post-industrial society.
In certain respects,
both conceptual and formal, Lee's recent
series of cyborg works mark a logical
progression from her early
wearable soft sculptures that functioned
as an artificial extension
of the body. As the artist says: "Whereas
my earlier works explored the boundaries
between the body, objects, and
culture in an organic, almost biological
sense, my concern with the
body now centers on its extensions and
substitutions, or its re-presentations,
through technological means.?With intelligence,
imagination, and a keen critical focus,
the art of Lee Bul reveals the
tension between the dream of self-transformation
fueled by new technologies and
the recuperative inertia of traditional
conceptions of feminine body and desire.
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