Southern California's premier modern and contemporary art museum.

Lee Bul
Supernova, 2000
Hand-cut polyurethane panels on aluminum armature with polyurethane coating
114 3/16 x 114 3/16 x 114 3/16 inches
Museum purchase with additional funds provided by Dr. James B. Pick and Dr. Rosalyn M. Laudati
2001.007

South Korean artist Lee Bul has used her work to explore gender, sexuality, and the body. In
her earliest performances, staged on the streets of her native Seoul, she often wore sculptures that she had created as extensions of her own body. Representing Korea at the 1999 Venice Biennale, she presented an installation that featured a video projection and karaoke booths she had designed for the exhibition. Another important series of her work has focused on cyborgs' science fiction hybrids that are part human and part machine: which she casts as incomplete female superheroes trapped in silicone bodies. In Supernova, she moved beyond gender identity to raise the specter of species identity. This immense hanging creature, crafted of cool white polyurethane, is part insect, part human, part plant: a strangely seductive yet sinister harbinger of a sci-fi future.