Haevan Lee

Netherlands-based, South Korean born artist Haevan Lee's paintings are absolutely astonishing dreams of swirling colors that investigate borders as places where geopolitics, history, ecology, and natural beauty collide.

Through painting, installation, and video, she combines fieldwork, historical research, and storytelling to examine landscapes shaped by political division, militarization, and restricted access.

Her DMZ Landscape Series exemplifies this approach, transforming inaccessible or photography-prohibited sites into meticulously constructed paintings. During a residency at Seoul’s Peace Culture Bunker, a former anti-tank defense shelter built following the 1968 invasion by North Korean guerrillas, Lee layered her observations of the surrounding landscape into hybrid painting-sculptures, later exhibited in Goliaths, Tanks (2018). Her broader practice extends into international collaborations with artists, researchers, and specialists, using art as a means of considering how communities might negotiate ecological and political boundaries.