BIO
changjinlee87@gmail.com
Chang-Jin Lee is a Korean-born conceptual artist and lives in New York City. Her multicultural background and experiences have provoked in her an interest in investigating the diverse cultural and social/political issues in our current era.
Chang-Jin Lee has exhibited including at The Incheon Women Artists' Biennale, The World Financial Center Winter Garden, The Queens Museum of Art, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Asian American Arts Centre, The Chinese American Arts Council, Van Brunt Gallery, Cuchifritos Art Gallery/ Project Space, Elizabeth Heskin Gallery, The Peekskill Project, and The Bronx River Art Center.
She is a recipient of numerous awards including The Asian Women Giving Circle Award, The Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant, The New York Foundation for the Arts Fiscal Sponsorship Award, The World Financial Center Sponsorship, The Puffin Foundation Grant, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Manhattan Community Arts Fund ; has participated in artist residencies internationally including The World Financial Center Artist Residency, The Youkobo Art Space, The Bamboo Curtain Studio, and Taipei Artist Village, as well as The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council - Creative Capital Professional Development Workshop.
Her artworks have been reviewed in publications including The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Daily News, Public Art, New York Arts, The Los Angeles Times, The World Journal, Metro, New York Press, The Tribeca Trib, The Korea Times, The Korea Daily, The Washington Journal, WTOP Radio, Lower Manhattan Info, San Diego Union Tribune, and The Associated Press.
Her artwork received national and international broadcast media attentions from New York 1 TV(New York City), Yue-Sai Kan's World(Shanghai), and Tokyo FM(Tokyo). She had artist talks at The Bamboo Curtain Studio art space and The Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Chang-Jin Lee is a Korean-born conceptual artist and lives in New York City. Her multicultural background and experiences have provoked in her an interest in investigating the diverse cultural and social/political issues in our current era.
"COMFORT WOMEN WANTED" (Incheon, Korea, 2009) presented at The Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, brings to light the memory of 200,000 young women, referred to as “comfort women,” who were systematically exploited as sex slaves in Asia during World War II, and increases awareness of sexual violence against women during wartime.
The text, "COMFORT WOMEN WANTED," is a reference to the actual advertisements which appeared in newspapers during the war. When advertising failed, young women were gathered from Korea, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, the Philippines,Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Netherlands, and forced into sexual slavery.
This project an Audio, Mixed Media Installation including a series of large Advertising -like Billboards/prints such as a black & white portrait of a young comfort woman contrasted with the silhouette of an aged former comfort woman in her current home.
Despite growing awareness of the issue of trafficking of women and of sexual slavery as a crime against humanity, this particular recent historical event has gone largely unacknowledged. This project attempts to bring to light this instance of organized violence against women and to restore the honor of those who lived through it.
A large-scale public art project, "Homeland Security Garden" (New York City, 2005) presented at The World Financial Center Winter Garden, in conjunction with The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's "What Comes After: Cities, Art and Recovery," investigates political and psychological in/security in the post 9/11 world. The World Financial Center Winter Garden was destroyed during the 9/11 attacks in NYC, 2001, and has rebuilt. This site has both an important architectural and historical significance.
It is a giant artificial maze that consists of 200 “Emergency Kits” created from donated objects that people considered essential to survive a crisis. Individuals from many different religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic communities around New York , including people from Asian, Muslim, African American, Jewish and Latino communities, contributed personal items, both intimate and practical. These “Emergency Kits” are then displayed on Astroturf covered pedestals in the structure of a maze or garden. The “garden” evokes a traditional sense of home and place while the “maze” represents the difficulties of navigating the world's current complexities.
An interactive installation “DNA : Making A Mark,” (Queens, New York, 2002) exhibited at The Queens Museum of Art, celebrates “individualism and identity” in light of recent genetic advances. Over a thousand people are invited to chew gum (One method of DNA testing), then stick it in plastic grids on the wall, and sign their names - thus encoding DNA, fingerprint, personal expressions, and signature all at once. Over time, the grids transform into a large gestural abstraction which encodes individuality and marks- a collective portrait of people’s personal expressions.
“24/7” (New York, NY, 2002), an installation shown at The Asian American Arts Centre, comments on the nature of the sweatshop and the exploitive aspects of globalization. This installation involves electric sewing machines which run continuously, sewing spools of multicolored thread onto endlessly unraveling rolls of toilet paper filling the installation space. The continuous motion performed by the machines is both repetitive and compulsive. Yet the results are fragile, colorful and infinite in their variety, much like the delicate hand crafted beauty of the work performed in sweatshops.
