Lee Bul 20th Biennale Of Sydney
Cockatoo Island
Sydney Harbour
Korean artist Lee Bul’s multifaceted artistic practice spans more than 20 years, encompassing drawing, performance, sculpture, installation and video. She is recognised for her technically precise, futuristic sculptures and architecturally influenced, large-scale, immersive installations. Lee Bul’s works deal with visionary narratives, and themes such as the legacy of modernism, the potential of technology, gender and sexuality, the limits of the human body and its interface with the mechanistic, the role of popular culture in the formation of identity, and humankind’s obsession with perfection.
In recent years, Lee Bul has engaged more deeply with the exploration of social structures and ideas surrounding our pursuit of utopia through increasingly large-scale installations that incorporate significant structural elements, often referencing science fiction and the innovations of modernity. Willing To Be Vulnerable, 2016, is a new, site-specific work created for the Turbine Hall of the Industrial Precinct on Cockatoo Island, a central focus of the Embassy of the Real. The work is monumental in scale, filling the cathedral-sized, 1640-square-metre industrial space with forms that echo the shapes of the landscape, creating a network of memory that is emblematic of the dreams and aspirations of humanity.
