Tate Modern has revealed a new sculptural installation by artist Mire Lee, who has reimagined the vast Turbine Hall as a surreal, body-like landscape. Lee’s creation evokes an unsettling, fantastical factory where rigid mechanical structures intertwine with soft organic forms. Her work, deeply rooted in the industrial past of Tate’s architecture, explores the emotional and physical toll of navigating a world marked by instability and decline. It’s a haunting reflection on the fragile balance between machinery and human experience in an age of uncertainty.
The artist’s first major presentation of work in the UK, the installation sees Lee explore the tension between beauty and the grotesque on an unrivalled scale. This is the ninth annual Hyundai Commission, made possible by the ongoing partnership between Tate and Hyundai Motor.
Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound, realises the Turbine Hall as a construction site, filling it with membranous fabric sculptures Lee calls ‘skins’, suspended from the ceiling on 54 metal chains. At the east end of the hall, a seven-metre-long turbine hangs from one of the building’s original cranes, especially recommissioned for this installation. This motorised mechanical device is a nod to the eponymous coal and oil-fired turbines that once occupied the heart of Tate Modern during the building’s former life as the Bankside Power Station. Removing the casing from the Turbine Hall bridge to offer a glimpse into its inner workings, Lee reawakens the building’s industrial past.
The new work also looks towards the duality of regeneration and decay. Slowly spinning, the industrial turbine assumes surprisingly human qualities, pumping dark pink viscous liquid through dangling vein-like silicone tubes, collecting in a large sloping tray underneath. Here, fabric sculptures made from construction mesh and bent steel rebar hang, absorbing the liquid to form new ‘skin’ sculptures. These are carried by technicians to drying racks, a process that feels both artisanal and suggestive of an industrial production line. Once dry, the skins are hoisted onto the chains suspended from the ceiling, redolent of the pulley systems used in coal miner’s changing rooms to dry uniforms and keep clothing clean, a liminal space between their labour and personal lives. Suggestive of anatomy, the skins speak of vulnerability, the necessity of care and human touch, and the production of new bodies and identities. Throughout the commission’s run, the number of new hanging skins will increase, creating a sense of the building ‘shedding’ increasingly over time.
Materiality is central to Lee’s practice, and she exploits the visceral qualities of her sculptures and installations to generate emotional reactions. Employing Lee’s distinct visual language that creates organic, fleshy forms from industrial materials, Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound, presents a world of contrasts and thresholds: human and machine, soft and hard, inside and outside, individual and collective. The installation is intended to have an unsettling effect on the viewer, evoking a range of contradictory emotions, including feelings of tenderness and empathy, as well as melancholy, awe and disgust. Engaging the senses on a bodily level, Lee considers our fears, vulnerabilities, hopes and desires as we stand together on the brink of an uncertain future.
Born in South Korea in 1988, Lee lives and works between Amsterdam and Seoul. Using industrial materials such as steel, cement, silicone, oil and clay, her work explores the animated nature of these materials as they pour, drip and bulge. Lee is interested in the power of sculpture to affect both the viewer and the immediate surroundings and is unafraid to push artistic boundaries in spectacular ways. Her atmospheric sculptures and installations engage the senses and create spaces to reflect on themes of emotion, precarity, and human desire. She has a bachelor’s degree from the Department of Sculpture (2012) and bachelor’s degree in Media Arts (2013) from the Seoul National University College of Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include Black Sun (2023) at the New Museum, New York; Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love (2022) at ZOLLAMTMMK, MMK Frankfurt; HR Giger & Mire Lee (2022) at Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; and Carriers (2020) at Art Sonje Center, Seoul.
Lee’s work was also featured in several group exhibitions including presentations at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2022), 11th Busan Biennale (2022), Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg (2021), Antenna Space, Shanghai (2020), the 15th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (2019), Art Sonje, Seoul (2019), Sharjah Art Foundation (2019), and the 12th Gwangju Biennale Pavilion Project (2018). She took part in the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam residency in 2018.
Since Tate Modern opened in 2000, the Turbine Hall has hosted some of the world’s most memorable and acclaimed works of contemporary art, reaching an audience of millions each year. The way artists have interpreted this vast industrial space has revolutionised public perceptions of contemporary art in the twenty-first century. The annual Hyundai Commission gives artists an opportunity to create new work for this unique context. The Hyundai Commission is made possible by the long-term partnership between Tate and Hyundai Motor, confirmed until 2026 as part of the longest initial commitment from a corporate partner in Tate’s history.
