Hyun Mi Lee

For the last four years I’ve been working on the question of whether culture and nature can co-exist within this modern society. Koreans always like to say that they have a harmonious relationship with nature and you can see the evidence of that from centuries of artwork but what’s happening in contemporary Korean society is not like that at all. The tiger, a symbol of Korea, has disappeared a long time ago.
Forest - In this work the empty bookshelves represent the loss of Korea’s culture and environment. Hovering above the empty spaces are the ghosts of animals forced to yield to this ‘progress’ as consumerable products.
They disappeared because of the change of natural habitat but also because Koreans believe that tigers are an aphrodisiac and like to eat them. We think of the tiger as a symbol of our country but now there are none. These rich men who have spent all their life working for money have now realised that they have lost their youth and want to buy something to keep them going so they pay huge amounts of money for tiger’s bones, penises etc to use as an aphrodisiac. That is the irony - we like to idealise that the tiger is our national spirit but in fact we pay people to go and kill them. That is what my recent work ‘Banquet’ is about.

I am a bi-cultural person. I live in Australia but I also have a very strong cultural background from Korea. As an artist it is important to me to be able to see the subtle difference between Australians and Koreans - and to me it is only a subtle difference. The people in Korea live the same way as Australians just in a slightly different environment. Korean and Australian artists have a similar attitude to gaining recognition - they both aim to further themselves by showing their work overseas. The similarity is that we both feel that we are isolated - the world is always ‘out there’.

Forest 2 - The Labyrinthine Culture - What is the caged prize that awaits us at the end of the Labyrinth and invites us to step over all the obstacles in our path?
Australians are very interested in the natural environment and Koreans are starting to get that way. We became involved in a lot of development in the last twenty years trying to build the Korean economy but there was a price to pay. The price is that all the natural resources have been destroyed. Now people are asking “Have we done the right thing? We have a nice home and a nice car, make a couple of overseas trips a year but we’ve cut ourselves off from nature.” I believe that if culture is going to be rich then it has to come along with nature but somehow we don’t seem to be able to balance the two. My works are looking at the idea of balancing nature and culture.

T.U. How about your style, were you influenced by traditional Korean painting and drawing?
A lot of the images that I select come from traditional Korean images but a lot of the methods that I use are very Western - I use a lot of screen printing and photographic images so it’s a sort of combination. I like to have images that look Asian but have a hint of a contemporary look.

T.U. Do you think it is easier being an artist in Korea or Australia?
Being an artist in Australia isn’t always a good thing because a lot of people have this attitude that artists are just abusing the taxation system and that they failed everything and that is why they are artists. In Korea it is a very different thing - they see you as a professional and think that you are brave to be an artist because you risk your financial security.

T.U. We recently spoke to an established artist who told us that unknown artists are unknown because they are s**t! (See front page - Ed) What do you think of that?
It’s very arrogant. I think that because Australians think artists are failed people, the artists become very arrogant and aggressive.

T.U. You have to go to Canberra to do your printmaking, do you think there is a lack of facilities for artists in Sydney?
Yes, I know a lot of printmakers and we’re all very frustrated in Sydney because there is not enough support at all. We’ve been planning to buy a printing press for many years but it costs a lot of money and we need to have a permanent space to house it. It’s something that we hope to do within the next five or ten years but at the moment it’s extremely difficult. I thought about moving to Melbourne or Canberra because they both have print workshops. Lately I find myself inclined to move away from printmaking because, even though I’m very attracted to the process of it I find it frustrating that I have all these ideas in my head but they can’t come out because I don’t have access to facilities.


David Cotter