Lee Bul, Untitled (Cravings White) 1988, reconstructed 2011. Tate. © Lee Bul.
Discover how Lee Bul’s monstrous fabric forms intertwine performance and sculpture
In 1988, Lee created a series of sponge-stuffed fabric costumes, which she used in some of her earliest performances. Their tentacle-like forms deconstruct society’s expectations of ‘well-behaved’ bodies. In Untitled (Cravings White) they also give physical form to the desires or ‘cravings’ that many keep private.
Untitled (Cravings White) is a reconstruction of the costume Lee wore during a performance held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea in 1989. Titled Cravings, it included three other performers. They moved around the museum lobby wearing Lee’s white, red and black soft sculptures. Microphones hidden inside the costumes amplified the sound of the performers’ movements. Documentation of Cravings is included in this display, alongside a slideshow of photographs of Sorry for suffering – You think I’m a puppy on a picnic?, a performance from 1990.
For Lee, artistic expression has always been a means of liberation. Growing up, she was aware of restrictions placed on her body and behaviour. Her parents were political dissidents who opposed the oppressive politics of totalitarian rule in South Korea. Lee also felt restricted by her education. While studying sculpture at university she felt pressure to produce work in line with European traditions. Her practice became a means to escape these expectations. Lee’s sculptures and performances express her desire for freedom of expression, as an artist, a South Korean citizen and a woman.
Erwin Wurm, One Minute Sculptures 1997
This video with sound is shown on a monitor and lasts nearly forty-eight minutes. It is one of a large number of works, mainly photographs, in Tate’s collection that form part of Erwin Wurm’s series One Minute Sculptures (see Tate P14777–P14816 and Tate P82011–P82016). Wurm began his One Minute Sculptures in 1988, and has since been continuously contributing to the encyclopaedic series in myriad locations around the world. The individual photographs feature images of people – anonymous participants, performers, curators, artists and even the artist himself – engaging in unconventional and sometimes physically challenging interactions with everyday objects such as clothing, buckets, balls, doorframes, bicycles and perishable goods. The resulting compositions feature unusual contortions – held for a minute – and illogical still-lives that are both humorous and provocative. While the photograph is the enduring record of each composition, the work comprises the entirety of the performative process, which begins with Wurm delivering instructions, both written and pictorial, to the subject of the ‘sculpture’. The participant subsequently enacts the determined formation or action and maintains it for a period of sixty seconds, during which time the pose is photographed. In a complex work that explores interaction, activation and the temporal, Wurm employs the photographic medium as a means of cataloguing his ephemeral studies.
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artworks in Lee Bul
Art in this room
Erwin Wurm
One Minute Sculptures
1997