Sammy Seung-min Lee: Taking Root

A first-generation Korean immigrant, Sammy Seung-min Lee transforms Korean hanji paper into intimate artworks exploring how familiar traditions can become unfamiliar within the setting of a foreign culture. 

Lee’s works use mealtime customs to tell personal stories about the ways in which the strangeness of a new culture can make even the mundane comforts of food and home seem incongruous. These works are also an opportunity to take a seat at someone else’s table—a glimpse into what it means to take root and make a new home. 

 

About the Artist

Sammy Seung-min Lee is a Colorado-based artist born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. Lee studied fine art and media at UCLA and architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A resident artist at Redline Contemporary Art Center, Lee also serves as an ambassador for Asian art at the Denver Art Museum, and operates a contemporary art project and residency space called Collective SML | k. Lee's work is held in museum collections including those of the Getty Research Institute, the Spencer Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Spanish National Library in Madrid.