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Lee ShinJa
Art Basel Paris 2025
October 24–26, Booth 1.J2
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At 95, Lee ShinJa Weaves Artistic Exploration into Legacy
The New York Times October 21, 2025On a recent Wednesday afternoon, hushed “oohs” and “ahhs” could be heard coming from a lower-level gallery at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) in California. A... -
Best of Art Basel Paris
Le Quotidien de l'Art October 23, 2025Lee ShinJa's Spiritual Windows A regular at Art Basel and Art Basel Hong Kong, Tina Kim ventures into Paris this year, with a solo show dedicated to the vaporous textile... -
Paris Challenges London's Art Crown with the Launch of Art Basel Paris 2025 at The Grand Palais
Forbes October 24, 2025Hot on the heels of London’s whirlwind Frieze Week, the international art world has shifted its gaze to Paris, where Art Basel Paris 2025 opens with striking confidence at the...
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Born in Uljin, Korea in 1930, Lee is recognized for her instrumental role in establishing fiber art as a legitimate and respected medium in her home country. After graduating from Seoul National University in 1955—a time when decorative textiles were limited to traditional embroidery and often dismissed as women’s domestic work—Lee broke from convention by embracing geometric abstraction and integrating craft methods with innovations in color, composition, and dimensionality. Her tapestries and other textile works from this early period featured simple shapes and patterns in bold colors, and she often played with scale through elongated, vertical compositions. Using weaving techniques like knotting, looping, and twisting yarn to add texture, Lee transformed her works into sculptural objects, challenging the boundaries of pictorial tapestry.
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Lee ShinJa, Spirit of Mountain, 1994
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Lee ShinJa, Untitled, 2008
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On view will be a selection of works spanning more than five decades of Lee’s practice, from early experimentations through to her late-career works from the early 2000s. Together, the works highlight the artist’s mastery of material, form, and color, charting new directions for fiber art with each stage of her creative development.
Lee’s influence extends beyond her artistic practice; she has held both teaching and leadership roles at Duksung Women’s University, served on committees for annual exhibitions and biennials in Korea, and mentored younger artists through her own exhibition space, Gallery Wooduk. In 2023, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea held a retrospective titled Threadscapes. This year, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in California opened Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread—the artist’s first survey exhibition in a North American museum—on view through February 1, 2026.
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Selected Exhibitions
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Drawing with Thread
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, August 6, 2025–February 1, 2026 -
Threadscapes
MMCA Gwacheon, September 22, 2023, to February 18, 2024
525 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10011 T 1‑212‑716‑1100 info@tinakimgallery.com
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