Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now brings together more than 200 works by the visionary South Korean artist. Spanning the past three decades of her multifaceted practice, this major survey delves into Lee Bul’s endless fascination with the body, technology, and lost utopias. From biomorphic compositions and hybrid figures to large-scale installations of decaying and unfinished monuments, the artist’s works encapsulate the precarity, contradiction and misplaced hopes that haunt our troubled present. In the artist’s words, ‘The endless drive to transcend human limitations is part of human destiny’—but along which treacherous paths might our ambition lead us, and will this journey compromise our humanity?

In this conversation with M+ Artistic Director and Chief Curator Doryun Chong, who also curated this exhibition, Lee Bul contemplates these questions, which continue to animate her astute and uncanny works, while reflecting on the evolution of her practice and her creative process.

Doryun Chong: How does it feel to see these works—some of which you haven’t seen in nearly 20 years—together in one place?

Lee Bul: When I see this exhibition, I find myself asking, ‘What does this exhibition mean to me now?’ The themes and materials in my practice may change over time, but each artwork summons memories within a landscape. This exhibition follows the same structure. As I often say, the work is my perpetual ‘present’, whether it was made 30 years ago or a few years ago.

What I focus on is the present. To borrow an expression, ‘the present is the moment when the past flashes into view.’ That’s what I aim to reveal in my work structurally. When you encounter my work, you might wonder: why are we talking about old theories or a past that’s almost forgotten? But to me, the present isn’t just a single moment; the past arrives as well. And looking at the present slightly askew, seeing all the lights from the past reach us—I think that’s what contemporaneity is.

You came to international prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s with your Cyborg and Anagram series, consisting of hybrid forms that interrogate the interrelationships between nature, technology, and the human body. In the decades since you began making these sculptures, the world has radically transformed. How do you make sense of these changes?

Back then, discussions about the intersection of humanity, technology, and the environment were still largely in the realm of imagination. Now, they’ve entered our reality. I never expected this to happen in just 30 years. What I was exploring back then was the relationship between technology and power, and I find it interesting that we’re now facing this not just in theory but in reality.

I think many of these works were misunderstood at the time or interpreted in a narrow way as being influenced by Hollywood or Japanese sci-fi films. Do you expect a deeper understanding of the themes from visitors at this exhibition?

It was a pity that my work was reduced to that interpretation 30 years ago, but I think the problem is resolved. Today, we see the ways that technology can advance civilisation, but we also worry about the sociopolitical changes that this entails. The Cyborg series includes meticulously layered references that address the issue of technology and power. I wanted to study unrealised visions: how were they sustained and how did we process their failure to materialise? Back then, this wasn’t such a big topic, so people focused on the formal references instead, and my work was misread as an examination of the relationship between beauty and technology, or the boundary between pop culture and high art.

Another longstanding series in your oeuvre is Mon grand récit, which you began in 2005. The title translates to ‘my grand narrative’ and is a somewhat ironic reference to 20th-century post-colonial and post-structuralist discussions around grand narratives of progress and modernity that came under scrutiny in the wake of the First and Second World Wars. Why are you interested in utopia, and are there new meanings that emerge from these works in the context of Hong Kong?

With Mon grand récit, I wanted to expand my exploration of modernity. After 20 years of immersing myself in this topic, many questions still remain unresolved. I think this pursuit comes from the desire to understand humanity and the world.

The references in my work, whether historical or imagined in literature and film, all point to the same thing: human attempts to envision and realise utopia, as well as their inevitable failure. Many utopian projects in history have ended in failure or outlived their original purpose and turned into something else. In some cases, people continue despite knowing their visions can never be realised. I mix such references with my own personal memories and impressions—my ‘present’.

When I look at this exhibition, I feel it extends beyond the museum walls and into the city, forming a grand work of art itself. My practice focuses on modernity, and Hong Kong is a place where architectural elements of modernity are concentrated and compressed physically. The M+ building also feels like an open field with multiple layers that form one broad, overlapping landscape.

There’s a large-scale installation titled Civitas Solis II (2014), which is this field of illumination inspired by Italian-Dominican friar Tommaso Campanella’s 1602 treatise about a fictional society in which all the women, children, and natural resources are kept in confinement for equal access by the male citizens—an idea that would be considered startling or misguided by a contemporary audience. How do you come upon marginal sources like this, and why do you engage with them in your work?

The concept for Civitas Solis II came during a visit to Japan soon after it was hit by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. As the plane descended into Tokyo at night, the city seemed to me like a symbol of civilisation: the lights felt melancholic, like fireflies in the dark, beautiful for just a brief moment. I wanted to create something out of that feeling, the image of civilisation after disaster. That view of Tokyo from above reminded me of Steven Spielberg’s war film Empire of the Sun (1987), which in turn led me to Campanella’s Civitas Solis (The City of the Sun). These associations may seem illogical, but I often jump from one reference to another, which is puzzling to myself, too. But as I connect them and create layers, we see fragments of failure. We’re walking through the ruins of the past. That’s why I see Civitas Solas II as a landscape of ruins. To intensify that, I introduced distorted reflections, so that viewers are also projected into the landscape.

The third section of the exhibition showcases your sketches, maquettes, and architectural models, giving visitors a sense of what’s inside your mind and your studio. Today, artists have many advanced tools at their fingertips, such as digital 3D modelling and 3D printing, but you insist on making drawings and models by hand. Could you elaborate on your creative process?

I use high-tech tools to the extent that they give me the effect I want; I can’t fully rely on them yet as the results don’t meet my expectations. Also, I’m cautious about realising ideas too quickly. By holding onto an idea for longer, I can doubt it, reinforce it, develop it further. My initial ideas are raw and fragmented. It takes time to refine them carefully into works.

I’m obsessed with materiality. During the conceptual stage, I think about theme, subject, and form. But to fully embody them, the material must relate to the structure I’m exploring as well. So, I invest a lot of time researching the properties of materials, going through tests in the studio. When my work is finished, I believe its materiality should also express what the work is about. I want to deliver my work to the audience in a way that activates all modes of perception, including sensation.

The majority of my sculptures start from drawings. Every morning I wake up, grab a cup of coffee, and go straight to the studio. I sit in front of a blank sheet while I sip my coffee and think. I don’t make drawings with the intention of showing them; they’re just records of thoughts that I stick to my wall. I try to write everything down: materials, actual scale, and so on. This is a good method for sculptors because we can’t realise everything in our imagination. The building stage is when I figure out how to work with gravity—it’s labour-intensive and time-consuming. The drawings show how I conceptualise, with fragments of ideas floating around me and connecting in different ways. This is when I let my imagination run wild and free.

What are your thoughts on the future? Will we ever find utopia?

We all know that the inevitable premise of the word ‘utopia’ is that it can never be realised. Yet this idea has survived. It goes by different names now that the original term has become a cliché, but the underlying aspiration is the same.

I’m not an optimist, but in my own life and artistic practice I want to keep pushing as far as I can, even if I don’t know where this pursuit will take me. I want to understand. I still haven’t given up on the absurdity of the world.