John Seung-Hwan Lee

Lee was born in the US, but grew up in South Korea from the age of three to fifteen. Starting high school, he spent nearly two decades in the US. Since 2018 Lee has been living and working in Berlin.

Growing up, Lee learned Korean as the first language. Since migrating to the US, he developed his own ambivalent relationship to English. For a non-native speaker, English always imposes itself as a pursuit in greater possibilities. Introduction to and continued learning of critical theories reveals to Lee the ground on which the contradiction is heightened. English is on the one hand, a demand for homogeneity and on the other, an international common language with access and prestige. In addition to critical theory, his research interest involves comparative history between the East and West, as well as North and South Korea.

Lee’s practice involves dance, drawing, reading, writing. As a hobby, he likes to print and bind PDFs into books and learn the etymology of Chinese writings. Lee received BFA at Alfred University, Alfred, NY in 2011 and MFA at Parsons The New School for Design in 2014.