About myself:

My name is Suwon Lee. I am a Korean-Venezuelan artist currently living in Madrid. My main interest through art in the past has mainly been to photograph landscapes and cityscapes, to grasp a concrete perception of space, place, and belonging. Ever since I left my hometown of Caracas in Venezuela back in 2016, I have moved three times and have been looking for a new place to call home. During that time, I have done residencies in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Vermont, USA, as well as moving to my family’s home in Seoul, Korea. The uprooting from my country of birth and the nomadic lifestyle experience has guided me to begin research into an ongoing project about my family’s archive photos as well as a new project of self-portraits, something I had started working on in the beginning of my career more than fifteen years ago and had not continued until now. Throughout my life, I have constantly confronted the arbitrariness of social identifications and labels. Instead of confirming one identity over another, I seek to recognize in myself a fluid identity without limits. I wish to establish a relationship between the body, space, time and light. My goal is to use the self-portrait, the documentation of the body, as a tool for self-knowledge.

Proposed lines of inquiry during the residency (February 2020):

During a residency at the Joya: AIR program, my plan is to continue in this line of research into the self, this time using the privileged access to nature and the arid landscape of Almería to create works where human presence is portrayed in interaction with the elements, reconnecting with the land and being one with it. The connection between the physical body and the elements in the natural world is essential, as both are directly linked to the numinous, the divine power that permeates all the cosmos. Doing shots at night as well as during daytime would be my main focus, giving room for experimentation and allowing the process to dictate where the work goes to, without any limitations.

The result (October 2020):

Self-portrait as consciousness of time (Autorretrato como conciencia del tiempo) Suwon Lee

Today, October 16, 2020 I thank you, Simon Quentin, Donna and Simon David, for being here with me to inaugurate this site-specific installation. Thanks to Joya: AiR, I have been able to come into contact with the Earth, our precious treasure, our fountain of life and our home.

Time has neither beginning nor end. There has always been and will always be change, which can be labeled as the passage of time.

I have lived through many lives in all conceivable life forms, from the unicellular, the invertebrate, the aquatic, the reptile, insect, animal and human form. From all realms of existence in the ten dimensions, I have been born again and again, and in this life I call myself Suwon. Born from the Good star and the Bright Jade, my name means fountain of cultivation. I have spent my life cultivating, nourishing, enriching, preparing and knowing myself.

Here in this barranco, I have known myself in this self-portrait made with stones, the ancient and wise witnesses of time. These stones, just like us, are the product of the coming together of the elements: fire, water, earth, wind and space. They are the very essence of the universe and they remind us that ‘As it is outside, so it is within the body’.

Today, before you three who are my witnesses, I bury myself into the ground of Almería, I bury my symbolic body, and I merge with this land.

I dedicate this piece to all my ancestors, the women and men who came together to bring forth life, and who faced hardships and trials in order to live a worthy life.

This piece exists for today. It is ephemeral, and it may be destroyed by the force of nature or by the human hand. May it be a constant reminder of impermanence and of the consciousness of the passage of time.

As the waters of the rain and riverbeds carry away everything in its path year after year, century after century, millenia after millenia, so may our lives also carry us towards the paths that we are meant to take and discover our purest essence and consciousness.

May we all reach a splendid, pure inner world while still living in our imperfect, earthly one.

May you be safe

May you be happy

May you be healthy

May you live with ease

May we all go in peace.

Thank you.

Suwon Lee

Joya: AiR / Suwon Lee / VEN