Kang Seung Lee is included in the 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, is on view through April 20–September 30, 2024, at the Central Pavillion.
The Venice Biennial's press release follows:
The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, is open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organised by La Biennale di Venezia. The pre-opening took place on April 17, 18 and 19; the awards ceremony and inauguration was held on 20 April 2024.
Since 2021, La Biennale di Venezia launched a plan to reconsider all of its activities in light of recognized and consolidated principles of environmental sustainability. For the year 2024, the goal is to extend the achievement of “carbon neutrality” certification, which was obtained in 2023 for La Biennale’s scheduled activities: the 80th Venice International Film Festival, the Theatre, Music and Dance Festivals and, in particular, the 18th International Architecture Exhibition which was the first major Exhibition in this discipline to test in the field a tangible process for achieving carbon neutrality – while furthermore itself reflecting upon the themes of decolonisation and decarbonisation.
Kang Seung Lee engages in various artistic media including drawing, embroidery, installation, and appropriation of organic materials and objects. His work involves extensive research periods that are not just documentary but also integrate imagistic elements. Lee’s work is an installation based on the many narrative and iconographic possibilities of artistic figures such as Goh Choo San, Tseng Kwong Chi, Martin Wong, José Leonilson, and Joon-soo Oh, among other artists who died due to AIDS-related complications. In the environment created by the artist, the spectator is able to reconfigure queer narratives in a transnational and transhistorical way. Drawings, embroideries made with 24-karat gold-plated lines, objects hung from the ceiling, and other elements installed on the walls allow viewers to move between narratives that pay homage to essential names of queer culture in an antimonumental way. How can micro- and macro-history be found in one installation? Lee prefers a pluralistic view of history rather than an encyclopaedic narrative.
This is the first time the work of Kang Seung Lee is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Raphael Fonseca
