ABOUT
BIOYehRim Lee (b. 1989, South Korea) is a Korean-American artist living and working in Joshua Tree, California. She received her BFA in Ceramics from Korea National University of Cultural Heritage in 2013 and her MFA in Ceramic Art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2017.
Lee has presented solo exhibitions at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, and the McGlothlin Center for the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at institutions and exhibitions including the Cheong Ju Craft Biennale, Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, American Museum of Ceramic Art, ASU Art Museum, and NCECA.
Her work has also been presented by LaiSun Keane at Future Fair in New York and exhibited at Gallery Koen in Los Angeles.
Lee has completed residencies and visiting artist appointments at institutions including the Archie Bray Foundation, The Clay Studio, University of Georgia, and University of the Arts.
Artist Statement
I build bridges. I build bridges between East and West, between decorative and functional, eternal and the ephemeral. The bridges suspend (often in the air) decay, ambiguity, and sensuality. Taut, fibrous stings of emotional labor welcome the viewer across the chasm. Through colors and glaze, I explore luxury and decadence with surfaces that crystallize, facet, fragment, blur and cause noise.
My process mirrors the obsessive repetitions of late-stage capitalism. I fire and re-fire, introducing glazes each cycle, stopping only when the material starts to crack and warp. Even after firing, the layering continues until I achieve a “vibrancy of too muchness”: pink on sweet sweaty blues, narcissistic yellows on avaricious greens.
As I bridge seas, I have a foot on two shores. In Korea, my mother made ceramic work while I was in her womb, and my father is an Onggi potter. In Jingdezhen, China, I experienced collective culture, which later in the USA was contrasted by American individualism. Through the clash of borderlands, my work negotiated new identities.
I want people to travel across my bridges. In the middle of the bridges, I hope that we might share moments of awareness, empathy, and shared human yearnings.
STUDIOLee works from a home studio in the high desert of Joshua Tree, California, where the surrounding landscape, domestic environment, and rhythms of daily life become part of her material practice.
The studio is a place of continual making, firing, experimentation, and accumulation—a space where inherited ceramic knowledge meets the conditions of the desert and the immediacy of contemporary life.