Hyundai Commission: Mire Lee: Open Wound

This is an Audio Description of the 2024 Hyundai Commission: Open Wound: a large installation created by artist Mire Lee.

Lee was born in South Korea in 1988, her work probes human hopes and fears surrounding technological progress.

Open Wound is located in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall: a vast, rectangular space at the heart of the building that is 35 metres high, 155 metres long and 23 metres wide with a sweeping grey concrete floor. Light pours in from a rectangular roof light made up of 524 panes of glass. The Hall is situated between the Natalie Bell and the Blavatnik Buildings which both house galleries. From these galleries, there are various viewing points into the Hall. A wide bridge spans the centre of the Hall, connecting the two buildings at the first-floor level.

The Turbine Hall has a huge and dramatic entrance area with ramped access that slopes down. It levels out and leads you into the installation space.

Reflecting on the building’s former life as a power station, Lee’s work presents the Hall as a living factory with various industrial systems in operation within the space. Using liquids, chains, silicone hoses and steel frameworks, Lee constructs mechanised organisms made of interdependent parts which assume surprisingly human qualities. Lee uses the full height of the building from floor to ceiling.

As you approach from the main entrance towards the bridge there are rows of long, metal chains suspended from the ceiling, way above your head. Attached are pieces of torn, mesh-like fabric, dyed muted shades of dirty pink and grey. The details become clearer as you move down the ramp. The sound of dripping liquid draws you further into the space, beyond the bridge.

As part of the installation Lee has had the cladding on both sides of the bridge removed, revealing the wiring and supports inside. The exposed "guts" of the structure serve as a reminder of the building’s industrial past as a power station. With the cladding removed, the end of the hall is partly revealed, creating the impression of a larger space.

Open Wound has various working elements, the most striking of which occupies the centre of the Hall's far end – beyond the bridge. Please be aware that there is a row of metal posts at intervals as you approach this area. Chains may be pulled across these posts for maintenance work during opening hours.

Beyond these posts is a chest high metal fence made of scaffolding poles that form an enclosure that is 10 metres wide and 17 metres long. You can move all the way around the enclosure but not enter.

Suspended from a ceiling crane that is part of the original building, a motorised metal turbine slowly spins above you. The turbine is 8 metres long and weighs over 3 tonnes. It discharges a reddish-brown liquid from chunky silicone hoses that are attached to it, which the artist calls ‘tentacles’. Below this, dangling from three 6-metre tall metal gantries are pieces of white fabric draped over curvy steel frames. Lee calls these fabric sculptures ‘skins’. The liquid sloshes down onto the ‘skins’ staining them a rusty pinkish red. It is then collected in a massive, galvanised drip tray on the ground. The liquid is transferred to white plastic bulk containers behind the tray before being pumped back up to the turbine.

The turbine resembles the inner workings of a giant clock with a row of huge metal cogs and wheels surrounding a central axle. It hangs horizontally with its back end tilted higher than its front and slowly rotates. The silicone tentacles are attached by small metal rings that allow them to move. The tentacles have soft pink innards encased in shiny stainless steel wire mesh – they ooze and leak in a sloppy fashion. They are wound around the turbine, flopping about as it turns. The tentacles are in constant motion: slithering down through the rings or being winched back up - which means that the liquid dispersal is messy and erratic.

The skins white fabric is made from scaffolding debris netting. The frames beneath the skins are made from thin steel reinforcement bars. They resemble giant coat hangers bent into hoops of different shapes and sizes. Some skins fit comfortably over the frame while others have been stretched to tearing point.

Multiple skins are being dyed at once by the tentacles. They hang at intervals from metal chains. Some are like long ghostly shrouds others are short and tattered with fraying tassels. The red-brown dye is designed to resemble bodily fluids - it is viscous, and contains water, methyl cellulose, artist pigment and aspirin. The dye covers the skins in a slimy coat, then splatters into the drip tray beneath, leaving a rusty residue.

The grey, galvanised drip tray is about 6 metres wide and 13 metres long. It sits on a black rubber floor mat. It is a metre tall at the back, sloping down to ankle-height at the front. The sides of the tray are bevelled to collect the large puddle of surplus liquid. The two large, white cube-shaped, bulk containers located behind the tray are encased in metal cages. They are connected to two yellow and black pumps on the floor beside them. Snaking between the containers and up to the turbine are thick black suction tubes that disperse the dye. The tubes pulse and twitch as the liquid courses through them.

There are gates in the fence surrounding the work which allow technicians in high-vis jackets to occasionally interact with the process. Nearby are some mops and a bucket, a smaller hose and a fire extinguisher.

If you move from where the suspended turbine hangs to the far back end of the Turbine Hall, there is a storage and drying area for the skins that Lee calls the skin station. The elements described in this area are sometimes rearranged, as the process of storing and drying continues.

The L-shaped enclosure almost fills the width of the Hall and is fenced off. Inside, there is an 8 metre high, industrial metal rack, made up of support columns and overhead beams. This holds a large number of skins stacked like dense cobwebs. These skins can be white, or, after dying, a dirty pink. Behind the rack is a 7-metre high scaffolding tower. Ladders on the right allow technicians access to several platforms adjacent to the rack. Below this there is a storage area with ropes and flight cases, metal girders and wooden pallets holding black tubing and metal chains.

To the right of the enclosure is a metal gantry from which several unused silicone tentacles hang limply in a row. The pinkish hoses curl in different configurations like intestines hanging in a butcher’s shop.

The rows of long metal chains that hang from the ceiling, display the dyed skins throughout the Hall. They become a key part of the installation process. There are 49 chains in total some hang in rows of five across the width of the hall others are suspended in clusters around the turbine. The dried skins have stiffened and there can be single or multiple skins on one chain: some shiver or turn in the breeze, while others hang limply, adding to the unsettling atmosphere. Skin is a barrier, separating inside and outside, the container of our individual forms. Lee’s fabric ‘skins’ suggest dissolved or malleable bodies. They speak to the shared nature of our fleshy existence.

The installation can also be explored from the bridge at first floor level. This can be reached by 2 flights of stairs from the Turbine Hall, or by lift. This vantage point offers a closer experience of the Turbine element of the work and the hanging skins.

Throughout the exhibition run, technicians periodically interact with Open Wound. New skins are wetted under the turbine, then moved to harden on the racks before being hauled into the air, on chains. Over time they will accumulate, ‘birthed’ from the body of the building while appearing to be ‘shed’ from the ceiling above. For Lee, the process is generative and intimate while also pointing to industrial decay.

Some of the labour and maintenance is done unannounced during opening hours while visitors are present, and the result has an element of performance to it. The main interaction is 3 times a month when the dyed skins are moved to the drying area and new skins put in place. The installation will increase in intensity as more hanging skins are added. There were 98 at the beginning and there should be 152 skins at the conclusion of the exhibition.

Concerned with industrial histories and how they continue to impact our lives today, Open Wound invites us to revel in contradictory emotions: from awe and disgust to compassion, fear and love. What results is animated assemblages which appear in a constantly deferred state of disintegration or breaking down.