Haevan Lee

Lives and works in The Hague, Netherlands

Artist statement

𝗕𝗶𝗼 Haevan Lee has been gaining growing international recognition for her practice across the mediums of painting, installation, and video, delving into the psychic and perceptual dimensions of geopolitical landscapes of borders and buffer zones. Drawing on her upbringing near the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and on wider research into sites shaped by conflict and division throughout the world, she summons these places into the realm of imagination, transforming them into immersive visual environments that meld landscape painting, storytelling, and historical memory. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 I was born near the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and am now based in The Hague. My practice began with restrained gestural painting that sought to depict landscapes that could not be photographed or accessed, and later expanded into research on geopolitical border regions across Korea, China, Eurasia, and Europe. I examine how landscapes register histories of conflict, division, and restriction, and how they embody silence and memory. With family histories marked by war, I have long been drawn to terrains shaped by both restriction and the desire for coexistence. This trajectory naturally led to long-term projects such as Buffer Zone, combining painting, installation, and research on restricted landscapes. Later works including Buffer Zone: Human-made Landscapes (2022) and the Battleground series explored how art can paradoxically create psychological buffer zones within tragic or ideologically...

Artwork