Buried Heart: An Interview with Sungmi Lee
Jee Young Maeng | Independent Curator
I’m trying to look at a heart—a heart that is no longer perfectly smooth, one that was once wrapped up tightly— almost instinctively—to protect it from wounds and hidden deep inside. There is no one who can avoid the scratches and tears that life inflicts. Yet, as we endure and confront those wounds, the time spent becomes a thin, invisible, transparent thread that slowly closes the gaps in those wounds. The heart, steadily piled up and buried, gradually transforms into a large, unrecognizable shape that resonates deeply within. Each encounter becomes a new voyage.
The first time I met Sungmi Lee was around 2007, and over the years, as I’ve continued to engage with her work, there were a few questions I had stored away but never asked. Perhaps the answers to those questions were already guessed, or the timing wasn’t right to ask them. Maybe the questions were already answered during the process, or perhaps they were deferred later. In hindsight, the questions I and the artist posed through her work were perhaps always directed inward. Some of the questions I now ask may already contain my own tentative answers, yet there were still a few that I wanted to hear from the artist herself, and so I gathered them.
Your work seems to have obsessively controlled the exposure of materials over time. You have a deep understanding and exploration of materials, perhaps more so than anyone else, yet you have persistently polished and smoothed the surfaces as if it were a meditative practice. Why was it important for you to do this?
I have approached materials in a way that resembles getting to know a person. I believe it takes a long time to truly understand someone, and I thought I needed to understand materials just as deeply. That’s why I spent time observing not only the process from the beginning to the completion of a piece but also the changes in the material afterward. Sometimes, this would take a year, or in, some cases, more than a decade. During this time, I experimented and explored the material, wanting to know in detail how it reacts and behaves under certain temperatures or humidity, and what changes occur over time.
In the process of trying to thoroughly understand the materials and acquire enough technical skills to manipulate them freely, my persistence and compulsion seemed to manifest through the surface or texture of the work. Reflecting back, I had a certain technical level I wanted to reach in my work. No one ever told me to polish the surface to such an extent, but I wanted to bring it to the point where it might be mistaken for an industrial product. It was a personal goal as an artist to reach that level and acquire the fundamental skills to use such techniques. It became a sort of disciplined practice driven by an obsession and desire for perfection. My ambition was to achieve mastery, to reach the level of a craftsman, and that became my goal and standard.
By making the fragile state of the material more solid, its surface has been polished smooth, sometimes to the point where it deceives the viewer about the true nature of the material. It feels like a process of sealing away pain or sorrow in multiple layers, obsessively grinding them down to leave as few traces as possible. This makes me wonder whether the audience has only been encountering “solidity” in your work all this time. What are your thoughts on this?
As mentioned in the question, there were times when I received well-meaning advice from people around me, suggesting that I should stop at a certain point in my obsessive process. There were also reactions where people wondered if my work was handmade, if it was porcelain or an industrial product, or if it had been melted rather than polished. However, I wasn’t satisfied because I felt I hadn’t yet reached the standard I had set for myself. That’s why I continued through that process to create my work.
Eventually, as I reached a point where I felt I understood the materials enough to use them freely, with the necessary technical skills and confidence, I began to free myself from the obsession with smooth surfaces and textures. In the past, my reliefs and three-dimensional works often featured simple shapes like circles or squares. The smooth texture in those works seemed to emphasize the space created by curves and the dimensionality of the forms, making them appear more solid.
Personally, I think my intense desire for my life to become smooth might have seeped into my work, especially amid the unpredictable variables of life—such as sudden accidents or death—that create bumps and roughness in one's daily existence. My work contains elements of Zen philosophy, meditation, and healing, so it feels as though the process itself became a form of personal discipline and prayer. By polishing every day, I expressed this through the clean and smooth textures of my surfaces. I believe I had a strong sense of faith, and perhaps even an obsession, that through this arduous process, my life could improve and I could become a better person.
What do you consider to be the most “fragile” state of the material? Throughout the long journey of transforming it into something solid, why haven’t you revealed that fragility as it is?
The “fragility” of the material in my work can be best represented by broken glass. Broken glass is useless. It loses its value as a material and is considered dangerous trash, having lost its original function. It becomes an unwanted existence that no one desires. I feel a deep sense of sympathy for this insignificant material that no one wants.
I wanted to take these fragile, insignificant things and transform them into something more valuable than they were, making them shine more brilliantly and preciously than jewels. Through the process of my work, they are reborn as something new and cherished. The act of piecing together shards of glass shattered by a great impact, became a kind of healing process. As I mended these fragments, it felt like I was healing myself as well. In thinking that I was creating something new from what was considered worthless and insignificant, I found that, as a wounded and fragile individual, I too, was being healed.
I believe in the power that comes when small, seemingly insignificant fragments come together as a unified whole. Through my works, made by gathering small shards of glass, I wanted to show that strength and energy. In fact, people who don’t know me well often see me as a fairly strong person. But in reality, I am fragile, easily wounded, and emotionally delicate. That part of me was reflected in the broken glass fragments I used, and through the process of polishing and smoothing them, I think my “fragility” was not easily visible in my work because I so deeply wished for my vulnerability to gradually become strong and resilient.
There are countless invisible drawings created daily, like a form of practice, but for the audience viewing the completed work, there seems to be a difference in the speed at which they can grasp your long contemplation and process. However, the two-dimensional and three- dimensional works in this exhibition seem quite different from your previous works. Unlike earlier ones, the process of the work is somewhat more visible. What changes have there been in how you handle the medium?
Because my work process is so labor-intensive and takes a long time, there have been times when the themes and ideas I embedded in the work were relevant at the beginning, but by the time the piece was completed, the context of the times had changed. There were also instances where, by the time the work was well underway or nearly finished, another artist with similar ideas happened to exhibit their work first, purely by coincidence. As a result, some of my works never made it out of the studio. This has been a source of concern for me as an artist for quite a long time.
In my past works, the process of creating the piece was just as important as the final result. However, after completing work through such a long process, I often felt that it no longer matched the current mood or pace of the times. For example, the issues or questions raised through the work had, in some cases, already been resolved by the time the piece was finished.
In this exhibition, ‹Blue Hour›, I did not use the materials I frequently employed in the past. For example, I did not use glass fragments, which were considered one of my main materials, nor did I use techniques like the polished coating that mimicked smooth glass. In other words, I found myself in the process of getting to know new materials, like forming new friendships, rather than working with the familiar ones I had thoroughly mastered over time. I deliberately moved away from the familiar materials and focused on the new phenomena that emerged during the process, broadening my spectrum of acceptance to embrace other possibilities. This time, I didn’t separate sculpture, drawing, and painting. I freely applied painting techniques to the three-dimensional forms, creating layers and even drawing over them, blending my background in painting with sculpture. In the past, I used to present painting, sculpture, and installation separately, but this time, I experimented with more freedom across different mediums. As curator Jihyung Park mentioned in the exhibition’s introduction, this seems to reveal both “painterly” techniques and “sculptural” approaches.
So, as an artist, this was a new challenge, and at the same time, it marked a point where I moved away from the obsession and compulsion toward clean and smooth surfaces. I feel like I’ve become more at ease with myself. I’ve become more generous and open toward myself, and perhaps this broader attitude has expanded my capacity for embracing life, both as an artist and as an individual.
This exhibition has been particularly special for me personally, as it gave me the opportunity to reflect on the work I’ve done over the past five years. I was surprised to discover how my past drawing works were connected to my current installation pieces. For example, Cloud Nine (2024) is influenced by the work Invisible and Visible (2021), which I exhibited during the exhibition «2021 DMZ Art & Peace Platform». That piece featured units created by simplifying the barbed wire of the DMZ and presenting them as transparent wire structures.
‹Cloud Nine› is a site-specific installation created to fit the space at Gallery SP, designed as a cloud that can float freely anywhere. This work, unlike Invisible and Visible, has been re-dyed with various shades of blue, sanded, and planned with a mix of transparency and translucency to give it a watercolor-like expression. During this process, while organizing past drawings, I accidentally discovered that the form of Cloud Nine aligns with a drawing I did in 2019 at the residency of Cité in Paris, titled The Meditation in Paris. It felt as if these two works were unconsciously connected, which surprised me. As a result, both pieces are included in this exhibition, and I hope the audience can feel that connection as well.
As you mentioned in your question, I’ve always said that the process is just as important as the result in my work, but in reality, I think I haven’t really shown the process until now. In my past works, I focused more on presenting the final outcome, the result that was newly born through the process. So, in this exhibition, it might be that I’m revealing my personal daily life in a way. The audience will be able to see installations and sculptures, including drawings that reflect the daily routine of my work over the past ten years. It feels like I’ve become more comfortable with myself now.
In this exhibition, the three-dimensional works differ from your past pieces in that the previously invisible processes are now visibly present on the surface while still showcasing the results of polishing. When pain and sorrow run deep, it’s often hard to even mention them, but after some time, a sense of distance naturally develops. Does the change visible in the work signify that the past sorrows, pains, and wounds have been somewhat healed, or that you can now view them from a distance?
You’re absolutely right. Since coming to Korea, the morning practices I’ve engaged in over the past ten years, along with the meditative process of my work and self-reflection, seem to have functioned well. Time can indeed be a healer. I’ve developed some resilience, and a significant part of my self-healing has occurred through the process of creating my work and as I’ve become a mid-career artist.
I think my capacity to embrace various experiences has also expanded. I still find the world to be daunting, uncertain, and unpredictable; I can’t even know what tomorrow holds. However, I have come to accept that I cannot control the unpredictable aspects of life. It feels like I am learning how to live with that acceptance through the process of my work.