John Seung-Hwan Lee

Lee was born in the US, but grew up in South Korea. He moved to the US in 2002 and lived there until relocating to Berlin in 2018.

At the core of Lee’s practice is dance, drawing, reading and writing. His training in dance, particularly Breaking, informs his use of feet and floor to perform embodied drawings and writings. Prompted by his ambivalent experience of learning English as a second language, his artistic inquiry in relation to language led to an absorption in the theory of the origin of dance, drawing, and writing arising from the bodily experience of the world. 

Indebted to a philosophy podcast and publisher Paper Renaissance, Lee embraces the exposure to languages at the edge of our conscious understanding, such as critical theory, as a transcendental experience. Inspired by the theory of revolution in one’s every day, Lee organizes reading groups. In addition to critical theory, his research involves comparative history between the East and West, as well as North and South Korea.

As a hobby, he likes to print and bind PDFs into books and learn the etymology of Chinese writings. Lee’s works have been shown in various galleries and institutions in Berlin, Leipzig, and New York. Lee received BFA at Alfred University, NY and MFA at Parsons The New School for Design, NY.