Jennie Jieun Lee uses clay as a medium to explore themes of identity, community, memory, and trauma’s aftereffects. Born in Seoul, and raised in the US, Lee’s work reflects on her Korean heritage and diasporic experience in America, blending Asian and Western cultural influences. With a background in painting and ceramics, as well as experience in the fashion and film industries, her approach is experimental, iconoclastic, and magical. Drawing from both modern and ancient sources, including twelfth century Korean ceremonial masks (Hahoetal), Abstract Expressionism, and European decorative arts, she employs a diverse range of techniques, including collage, airbrushing, oil painting, wheel throwing, slab work, and slip casting. Defying traditional categorization, her practice spans ceramic paintings, portrait busts, vessels adorned with flowers, textiles printed with her glazes, and sculptural installations. Her glazing technique is painterly and cumulative, as she pours and applies glazes of different viscosities and hues, to create rich, layered surfaces that she says are “often mined from her interpretations of scenes in films, notes in music and citations from novels.” She uses a variety of tools, brushes of many sizes, handmade patterned clay rollers, styluses, needle and scoring tools.

This exhibition is Jennie Jieun Lee’s solo museum debut and will feature new and recent works centered on invention and ceremony. Among the highlights is Marie, 2022, a recreation of the tomb of Marie Catherine Laveau (1801–1881), the 19th century New Orleans icon known as the “Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.” The sculpture will be encircled by dozens of the artist’s vases filled with dried flowers from her extensive gardens. The idea for recreating Laveau’s tomb originates from a visit the artist made there in 1994. The tomb’s outsized visual presence left a lasting impression that has influenced Lee’s mark making ever since. Lee encourages visitors to mark the sculpture with an X, invoke a wish, and join her by leaving their own offerings to Laveau (as they do at Laveau’s tomb in New Orleans to this day).

The exhibition will also introduce a new body of work created specifically for this presentation; four large-scale sculptures made from abandoned kilns that act as varied modes of display for her ceramics. The sculptures are assembled from parts found and collected with her partner Graham Collins. One sculpture in particular references the more contemporary rocket kiln developed by artist and educator, Lisa Orr. Additionally, a selection of glazing test tiles from the artist’s studio will offer visitors a glimpse into her process. Surrounding the sculptures on all sides will be the artist’s largest textile work to date, printed with impressions of her signature expressionistic brushwork on a grand scale.

The exhibition is organized by Diana Bowes Chief Curator Amy Smith-Stewart.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue, the artist’s first museum publication, which will include an interview between the artist and the exhibition’s curator, Amy Smith-Stewart.