Joo Young Lee: Body Keeps the Score
June 22 – July 7, 2019

Opening reception: Saturday, June 22, 2 – 5 p.m.
Performative reading with Caroline Joy Dahlberg: July 6, 6 p.m.
Mana Contemporary Chicago – New Media Program Residency #420

Mana Contemporary Chicago is pleased to announce Body Keeps the Score, a solo exhibition by Korean artist and New Media Resident Joo Young Lee. Following Cit-e-scape (2017) and Trembling Hill (2018), the new computer-generated animation premiered in this exhibition is the third and final episode of Lee’s trilogy that reflects the themes of memory, violence and recovery, and will be shown besides 3D-printed sculptures and digital prints.

Alluding to the City of Leonia in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as well as Francisco Goya’s print series, Disasters of War, the animation starts with a landscape filled with fragmented dead pigeons and transitions into a land where vegetations grow by fertilizing on those body parts. Using the role of street pigeons in the Anthropocentric society as a metonym for subjects who are victims of violence, the artist invites the viewer to ponder on the possibility of working through trauma by rewriting its score. Body Keeps the Score is curated by Nicky Ni.

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Joo Young Lee is a new media artist based in Seoul and Chicago. She holds an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in sculpture from Pratt Institute, New York. Using 3D animation, sculpture, and multichannel video installation, Lee investigates the dynamics of safety and fear, simulation and survival, fiction and documentary. Her focus is on contemporary urban environments, which she observes through the lenses of visual research, feminist theory, and media technology. Lee has exhibited at art spaces including Steuben Gallery and Galapagos Art Space, New York; EXPO CHICAGO, Chicago; and Art Space Seogyo, Seoul. She has also participated in screenings at Daedalus Multimedia Art Festival, Mykonos; and the Culture Station Seoul 284, Seoul. Lee is the 2018 School of the Art Institute of Chicago Awardee of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship, and the recipient of the 2017–18 Arts, Science + Culture Initiative Collaboration Grant from the University of Chicago. She is 2018–19 Artist-in-Residence at Mana New Media Program Residency.

Nicky Ni is a curator and researcher in time-based art.

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Cover image: Joo Young Lee, rendered image from Body Keeps the Score, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist.
Exhibition brochure designed by Lucas Reif
Special thanks to Q Choi, Sarah Dhobhany, Liwei Hu, Shawn Lucas

This exhibition is made possible by Mana Contemporary New Media Program

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Tags: Body Keeps the Score, Caroline Joy Dahlberg, Chicago, Illinois, Joo Young Lee, Joo Young Lee: Body Keeps the Score, Lower West Side, Mana Contemporary, Nicky Ni