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.
Mari Katayama, bystander #14 2016, printed 2021
In this self-portrait, Katayama is wearing one of her soft sculptures made from stuffed textile arms. She is lying down on Naoshima Island in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. Made during the artist’s residency there, the hands and arms represent both Katayama and residents from the local community. The bystander series is the first time other people’s bodies featured in her work. Stitched with small pearls and decorated with white lace, the sculpture appears to be part of her body yet also alien to her at the same time. This may suggest both the difficulty and the power of living with others, which Katayama encountered during the residency.
Gallery label, October 2023
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artworks in Lee Bul
Mari Katayama, bystander #23 2016, printed 2020
bystander #23 is a performative self-portrait made by the artist from the wider series bystander, which comprises twenty-four works in total. bystander #14 is also in Tate’s collection (Tate P82669). In these photographs Katayama is wearing a soft sculpture of her own design comprised of stuffed textile arms in various flesh colours. Some represent Katayama’s own hands and arms, others those of villagers in the community in which she made the work. All are stitched with small pearls and decorated with white lace. In bystander #23 Katayama is shown close up, seated on soft furnishings. The sculpture is draped around her shoulders and torso, and her legs are bare. In bystander #14 Katayama appears to wear this sculpture as a skirt, as she lays on the beach. A large soft sculpture of her legs is just behind her and the sea is in the background.
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artworks in Lee Bul
Mari Katayama, I’m wearing little high heels, I have child’s feet 2011, printed 2018
I’m wearing little high heels and I have child’s feet feature Katayama posed in her bedroom in Gunma, Japan. She is surrounded by personal possessions – including clothing, fabrics and sewing equipment – and a life-sized, embroidered soft sculpture in the shape of a human body. Both photographs closely relate to Katayama’s work as an activist and public speaker. Frustrated by the fact that high heels for wearers of prosthetic limbs were not readily available, Katayama began to make her own. The work developed into the High Heel Project, where she documents her process of making and wearing high heels with artificial legs.
Gallery label, October 2023
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artworks in Lee Bul
Art in this room
Mari Katayama
bystander #14
2016, printed 2021
Mari Katayama
bystander #23
2016, printed 2020
Mari Katayama
I’m wearing little high heels, I have child’s feet
2011, printed 2018