84 | MAY/JUN 2017 | ISSUE 103
(Previous spread)
Installation view of the exhibition “How to
Become Us,” at Art Space Pool, Seoul, 2011.
(This page)
MADE IN TAIWAN (SUGAR), 2013,
three-channel video: 12 min 25 sec;
products, dimensions variable.
(Opposite page)
DEI GRATIA, 2008, stills from single-
channel video: 8 min 10 sec.
Unless otherwise stated, all
images courtesy the artist.
One morning several years ago, Lee Wan had an epiphany while
eating breakfast. Looking at the various generic packages of cereal,
juice and sugar that were on his kitchen table, he began to casually
scan the items’ ingredients labels and the countries of their origin.
Unsettled by these insignificant yet telling details, Lee began to
consider how the most basic necessities of everyday life, such as
simple breakfast foods, had traveled from small factories in Southeast
Asia to giant supermarkets in the United States and Europe.
That particular morning’s rumination led to Lee’s video and
installation series, “Made In” (2013–17), for which he has adopted the
roles of farmer, producer and craftsman to investigate how commercial
goods are produced. Over the next several years, he traveled to
different Asian countries in pursuit of the factories and farms churning
out staples that are the lifeblood of that particular nation’s economy.
He filmed himself toiling at remote locations, such as a sugarcane
plantation in Taiwan; rice fields in Cambodia; a wooden table factory
in Indonesia; goldmines in Myanmar; and a renowned silk-suit
manufacturer in Thailand. The latest and final iteration, filmed
earlier this year, saw him meeting with farmers working in Malaysia’s
palm oil sector, and while there, he documented himself joining the
plantation’s workforce, extracting oil from palm kernels.
A partial display of “Made In” at the Leeum, Samsung Museum of
Art in Seoul, in 2014, featured a teaspoon of sugar, three grams
of gold and a bowl of rice, presented alongside four respective
videos that captured his long journeys to create these products.
For this work, Lee won the prestigious 2014 Artspectrum Award
and established himself as one of the most exciting artists of
his generation in South Korea. Furthering his rapid rise, at the
57th Venice Biennale beginning in May, he will present works in
the Korea Pavilion alongside Cody Choi. There, Lee will show 12
multi-channel videos and 12 products from the series, along with
other works such as Proper Time: Though the Dreams Revolve with
the Moon (2017), in which 365 clocks will run at different speeds
according to Lee’s extensive survey of international statistics and
measurements of income, and as a commentary on how modern life
is wedded to economic and political conditions.
Yet, even before “Made In” springboarded him into the spotlight,
meals and other daily rituals have never seemed simple for Lee.
From very early in his career, in the mid-2000s, he became fixated
on consumerism in contemporary society and its embedded systems
of labor, production and distribution, incorporating unusual
composites of inanimate, banal objects into his work to articulate
his nonconformist views of the increasingly materialistic world.
While “Made In” has taken Lee across Asia, inspiration for his work
is firmly rooted in his native South Korea, a resource-poor nation
that flourished following the rapid economic reforms of the 1980s
through developments in import- and export-led industrialization,
as well as by exploiting its labor-intensive workforce, becoming
the 12th wealthiest country in the world. Lee was born in 1979 in
Seoul, at the beginning of this period of growth, and also witnessed
the country’s financial bankruptcy in 1997, which shook public
confidence in the government and the local conglomerates (chaebol)
that control the Korean economy. As such, the artist recognizes
that the decades of progressive reform in South Korea have also had
negative or regressive social consequences, evident in contemporary
society’s excessive materialism, and a rigid education system that
favors profit-driven success over innovation or emotional growth.
When discussing his own youth, Lee mentioned that he switched
high schools several times, and had difficulty adjusting to new
environments. Most of all, he was consistently overwhelmed by
the demanding and hierarchical educational system. Even after he
enrolled at Dongguk University to study sculpture, he was surprised
to see friends and fellow students suffering similar pressures. He
recalled thinking that young adults of his own generation seemed
like objects on a conveyor belt, gradually being assembled into
working machines. Along with the development of this macroscopic,
critical view on the fundamental aspects of Korean society, Lee