Grieving in light:
Exploring Distance and Remembrance Through Juyon Lee’s Glass Installations
PEOPLE
May 2025
Written by Jiani Wang @jennijenni_iii
"The inherent instability of glass and resin—never entirely solid but always in a fluid state, resonates seamlessly with the artist’s ongoing exploration of fluctuating perceptions of time, as well as the notions of transience and ephemerality."
Juyon Lee's installations are visually lightweight, floating and drifting in the air. Yet, they also hold the artist's grief, loss, and the weight of memories from the past. Like echoes suspended in time, they form a translucent passage through past, present, and future—a portal where ambient memory merges with fleeting reality.
Born in South Korea, Lee immigrated to the United States at the age of ten, living and studying in the Boston area before moving to Brooklyn, New York, after earning her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. As one habituated to navigating between two distinct geographic and cultural spaces, Lee’s practice exudes a profound sensitivity and attention to the elusive and flowing nature of memory, thoughts, and sense, skillfully articulated through an imaginative and inventive interplay of working with a variety of materials.
Lee’s latest image-based, multimedia installation series, Bodiless Travels, composed of five distinct works, was showcased at the TCNJ Gallery in New Jersey as part of the two-person exhibition Something Between Air and Light last Autumn and winter. The images, woven into grid patterns, are shaped into arbitrary organic forms and sizes through various techniques and affixed to surfaces of materials such as Korean mulberry paper (hanji), fiberglass cured in resin, and glass. In Bodiless Light and Image Body Drift, the sculptural images—or image-based sculptures—are suspended in midair, interconnected by steel wires and glass tubing filled with Krypton gas. The gallery lighting creates site-specific shadows of the suspended sculptures that are cast on the wall and floor, creating a captivating play with light and shadow.
It is hard not to notice the sensational transmutation one experiences upon entering. The extrinsic qualities of Lee’s evoke an irresistible impulse to slow down, drawing the audience into an amorphous, transparent cocoon where they temporarily lose their sense of time and channel into an otherworldly space.
The woven images consist of photographs Lee took in her residency at I-Park, Connecticut, alongside images from her grandfather’s funeral in Seoul, South Korea, which she was unable to attend in person in the fall of 2023. The weaving process of these photographs became both a vessel for processing grief and the beginning for materializing the desire to bridge the distance. Through meticulous weaving, Lee intertwined images from disparate contexts, crafting a dialogue that transcends temporal and spatial boundaries on the surface of the imagery. The woven images were then re-photographed and printed onto new malleable surfaces like glass and fiberglass, transforming them into manifestations that evoke new meanings and sentiments.
In one set of the woven photos, a photograph of her grandfather’s body delicately wrapped into the shape of lotus flower in the Buddhist funeral, was spliced and interlaced with a photo of sunlight streaming through the window of Lee’s residency studio in Connecticut around the time of the funeral. The details of the original photos are almost inconceivable on the newly created glass surface. Yet, through its mirror-like, reflective quality, the viewer senses the ever-changing, multifaceted nature of the physical and temporal space in which we all exist.
Materials to demonstrate the woven images are thoughtfully selected. Resin, a material commonly associated with preservation and repair, resonates with the act of archiving as an intrinsic layer within Lee’s work. The malleable and organic feature of both resin and glass, with their glossy, reflective appearance, tinted in varying hues and with differing levels of luminance and translucency, create a material parallel to the character of memory and perception—both are often elusive, and subject to change and interpretation.
Lee’s contemplations on the physical properties of the materials evolved throughout the making process, becoming an integral part of the work. The inherent instability of glass and resin—never entirely solid but always in a fluid state between permanence and impermanence metaphorically and structurally—resonates seamlessly with the artist’s ongoing exploration of fluctuating perceptions of time, as well as the notions of transience and ephemerality expressed through physical materials. Yet, this explorative journey is not solely personal. Through the immersive experience and deep gazing, the audience is invited into a tranquil and transcending space for their own contemplation of the human relationship with time, perception, and memory.
Credit: Juyon Lee in her studio. Photographed by Jiani Wang
Juyon Lee is a South Korea-born artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up between Seoul and the greater Boston area, Lee developed her interest in dissonance in space and time and ephemeral nature of being. She explores the idea of transience and fluidity in perception and meaning-making process by weaving images into multidimensional works composed of architectural elements, functional and nonfunctional objects with ethereal materials like light and air.
Lee has exhibited widely, including Tufts University Art Galleries (Medford, MA), New Bedford Art Museum (New Bedford, MA), TCNJ Gallery (Ewing, NJ), Jewett Arts Center (Wellesley, MA), and NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY). She is the recipient of notable fellowships and awards, including the Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship, Pilchuck Fellowship, and St. Botolph's Emerging Artist Award. She participated in artist residencies at LMCC Arts Center, The Studios at MASS MoCA, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, and more. Lee holds her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and her BA from Wellesley College (summa cum laude).
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