Hayoon Jay Lee
Hayoon Jay Lee is a multimedia visual artist who explores the relationship between her cultural background and diasporic hybridity. The essential medium of Lee's work is "Rice" as an object, motif, and metaphor that can revive her existential questions about her identity as a Korean. The presence of rice as an object and its transformed abstract image also contains philosophical discourse related to dualism and ambivalence, which suggests a kind of visual echo designating points between attraction and abstention between East and West. Her paintings, which keenly display her surreal emotions, implicitly revealed the artist's inner conflict world. However, for the artist, such conflicts or ambiguity is not a negative image but rather a confrontation with the existing situation. As Metaphysical Journey-IV (2021) shows powerfully vital energy in a small grain's life movement among the rice group, Lee ultimately pursues producing conditions in which healing and harmony in complicated places.
Hayoon Jay Lee was born in Daegu, South Korea. She obtained a BFA in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2007, and an MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at MICA in 2009. Among her many honors and awards, Lee received the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship award (2008) from the U.S. Department of Education, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant(2008), and a Dapu International Art Award (2011) from the Northern Art Museum, Daqing China. In addition, Lee has participated in several artist residency programs that include 99 Museum (Beijing, China: 2014); Gwangju Museum of Art (S. Korea: 2012); the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA: 2009); Sculpture Space (Utica, NY: 2011); Art Farm (Marquette, NE: 2016), and the Beijing Studio Center (2010) in Beijing, China. Her work may be found in the collections of the Gwangju Contemporary Museum of Art (Gwangju, Korea: 2017); the Henan Museum (Zhengzhou, China: 2010); the Queens Community College Art Gallery (2015); the Community School of Maryland (2004); Utica Sculpture Space (2012); the Dapu International Art Center (Daqing, China: 2011); and many private collections. She has exhibited her work widely, both nationally and internationally.