Lee Bul’s Unsettling Guardians Now Grace the Met’s Facade The commission marks the artist's first intervention in the U.S. in twenty years

Four futuristic guardians now loom over Fifth Avenue, gracing the iconic facade of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. This installation, titled Long Tail Halo, is the latest creation by visionary South Korean artist Lee Bul and is part of the annual Genesis Facade Commission, which kicked off in 2020 with work by Wangechi Mutu. It marks Lee Bul’s first U.S. intervention in over twenty years, following her 2001-2002 exhibition at the New Museum.

Lee Bul is one of the most celebrated South Korean contemporary artists, renowned for her distinctive approach that explores the interaction between humans and non-humans, revealing their complex and dangerous interdependencies. Working across various mediums—including performance, sculpture, installation, architecture, printmaking and media art—she has crafted a continually evolving universe that reflects on contemporary innovations and speculates on future possibilities or dystopian scenarios. Her research often bridges technology with a shared human consciousness and the myths and folklore that have shaped our civilization, probing the structural systems that govern everything from individual bodies to expansive architectural and narrative frameworks in cities and utopian societies.