Artist: Sujin Lee

Saatchi Yates presents Where We Once Stood, the latest solo exhibition by Korean artist Sujin Lee, featuring a new body of paintings created between 2025 and 2026.

Following a solo exhibition at TAO ART in Taipei, Lee turns her gaze further inward, tracing the emotional residues that remain after a moment has passed. Rather than depicting a particular event or scene, she is interested in what lingers in the body and memory once its details begin to fade: a quality of light, a silence, an atmosphere, or an emotion that resists being put into words.

“The ripples within the mind take time to slowly subside. What remains, once the turbulence has passed?”
- Sujin Lee

Girls and nature remain central motifs in Lee’s paintings. Her figures retain their steady, searching eyes and windblown hair, but now appear to inhabit the aftermath of an experience rather than the event itself. For Lee, the girl is not a specific person or age, but a vessel for feelings that are fragile, unfamiliar and difficult to articulate.

Alienation, emptiness and uncertainty recur throughout her work, left deliberately unresolved so that viewers can project their own memories and experiences onto the image.

Nature also assumes a greater presence in these paintings. Wind, snow, darkness, air and light are no longer simply settings, but become part of the emotional landscape itself. Lee works with greater looseness and instinct, allowing the boundaries between figure and landscape to become increasingly porous. Her girls seem to dissolve into the temperature, atmosphere and light around them, while nature becomes a way of expressing what language cannot precisely name.

ABOUT SUJIN LEE
(b.1990, Jeju Island, Korea)

Sujin Lee was born in Jeju Island, Korea, famous for its rich landscapes, and has since moved to Seoul, a contrasting metropolitan hub of Korea where she currently lives and works. Lee is heavily inspired by her close circle of friends who influence the groups of female figures in her works. Lee also takes great inspiration from the tranquilizing presence of nature in her hometown Jeju Island, and her works reflecting this often include backdrops of cityscapes with thick leafy plants surrounding groups of female figures. Lee’s works are a true celebration of female friendship, sisterhood, and all that lies in- between.

Lee currently lives and works in Seoul, Korea. In 2019 she was awarded the Selected Artist Prize, the 47th Grand Art Exhibition of Jeju. Selected exhibitions include: Glad to me, Carlos Queso Gallery, Los Angeles (2016); One Page, Lottie Gallery, Seoul (2017); Art in my Mouth, Secret Fresh Gallery, Manila (2019). Lee’s work was included in an exhibition at chi K11 Art Museum in Shanghai, China. Lee’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Boghossian Foundation, Brussels, Belgium and the Museu Inima De Paula, Brazil.