While a FAS College Fellow Young Joo conducted research on alternative narratives using virtual and physical media such as animation, performance, and virtual reality. One of her current projects, The Wall, is an interactive Virtual Reality art piece where participants can draw and write on the virtual US-Mexico border wall.
Young Joo Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. She spent her adolescence in Germany and Korea. The difference in culture, language and the relationship between national and personal identity became the central interest during this period. Lee finds inspiration in her dreams, personal and political histories to create sculptures, drawings, and performative pieces. Her recent animation videos are a compilation of these mediums, which reflect the structure of a scroll in order to take the viewer on an imagined journey. Her work is a glimpse into how our environments are not only outside of us but how they truly alter our perception as a whole, informing our personal identities.
Young Joo Lee (b. 1987, Seoul, Korea) received an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University and an MFA in Film from Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. Lee’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea; Medrar for Contemporary Art in Cairo, Egypt; Curitiba Biennial for Contemporary Art in Curitiba, Brazil; Kunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria; Artspace New Haven in New Haven, CT; and Zero Field in the 798 Arts District of Beijing, China. Lee is the recipient of various awards and grants including a 2020 Seoul Foundation for the Arts and Culture Artist Grant; 2018-2020 College Fellowship in Media Practice at Harvard University; 2015-2018 Fulbright Scholarship in Film & Digital Media; and a 2010-12 DAAD Künstler Stipendium. Lee currently lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and Cambridge, MA where she is a Visiting Lecturer in Animation at the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University. Lee is represented by OCHI in Los Angeles, CA and Sun Valley, ID.