Yoora Lee

Yoora Lee’s practice centres on the space between seeing and remembering, exploring how her memories have shaped perception over time. Drawing on the visual language of pre-internet media, her earlier works construct familiar scenes shaped by the transition between analogue and digital cultures, using analogous colour relationships and wavering horizontal brushstrokes that make reference to 1990s technology. More recently, she has drawn influence from her inhabited spaces, working in watercolour to create layered surfaces in which each mark remains visible. Her compositions unfold between shared domestic interiors and childhood environments recalled through fragmented memory. Figures remain central yet understated, occupying spaces that feel both intimate and unsettled.

Lee was born in South Korea in 1990. She earned a BFA in Painting from Gachon University in 2015 and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. She was a finalist for the Hopper Prize (2020) and nominated for both the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship (2020) and the Municipal Art League Award (2020). Lee’s work has been exhibited internationally, with solo presentations including Shadow Etched in Stone at Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024), Anemone at Another Place, New York (2022), and BURN IN at Jude Gallery, Chicago (2021). Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at Shin Haus, New York (2021); K11 Musea, Hong Kong (2022); and Half Gallery, Los Angeles (2022) among others. Lee currently lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.