ILL-SUITED
April 22 - May 21, 2022
a two person show of Seung-Min Lee and Michael Smith curated by Rufus Tureen. The show consists of two videos, prompted by a drawing made on a tyvek coverall by Seung-Min Lee. The resulting videos, created in tandem with a brief overlap, explore the alienation, fatigue and violence of the last two years.
BIG WHITE
Big White, 2022
A video that documents a series of performances that take the shape of the artist’s ritualistic processions through iconic areas in New York City including Chinatown, Harlem, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Fox News Headquarters. Lee wears a white tyvek suit that is stained and damaged from an earlier performance offscreen in which she threw the brand new safety suits in front of the oncoming subway on the same platform at Times Square where an Asian woman, Michelle Go was pushed to her death in front of a train by a stranger in one of many violent attacks in the wave of anti-Asian sentiment since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the video, Lee drags through the streets on her ankle what she calls a “charm bracelet” that is a heavy chain loaded with objects that ward off or invite danger: at home COVID tests, surgical gloves, a manicurist’s model hand holding a pepper spray, a heavyweight punching bag, and an aluminum baseball bat. “Big White” refers to the term Chinese people in China call the Hazmat-suited volunteers who manage and police the quarantines.
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