YehRim Lee: Cross-Continental Flux

YehRim Lee’s work explores the contemporary human condition using decorative clay techniques (coiling, sculpting glaze, incising, and layering multiple colors) acquired through traditional training. She grew up in a family of artists who made Korean onggi ware, an iron-glazed brown pottery used for storing and fermenting food. She also studied ceramic making in Jingdezhen, China, the ​“porcelain city” that produced much of the high-quality blue and white ware for global trade between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. However, Lee seeks to expose the materiality and the processes hidden by the smooth surfaces and precise decorations of historic porcelain ware.