Private Collection
Kang Seung Lee’s assemblages and installations pay tribute to the creativity and activism of individuals lost to the AIDS epidemic by consolidating their stories into multifaceted transhistorical narratives. Lee combines various artistic mediums including drawings on parchment, embroidery, and organic materials collected from sites significant to his subjects. Spanning walls, tabletops, and floors, Lee’s installations are immersive yet intimate tableaux of queer networks. As are the collections of queer archives that he installs within the exhibition space, emphasizing public access to underrecognized primary documents and historical materials. Lee’s multimedia practice foregrounds tangible objects and direct engagement to preserve and promote the contributions of his predecessors. “I would like my work to question the erasure of others who came before and remain unseen,” he contends, “to generate conversations about the space that holds intergenerational connections and care, and to be an invitation to reimagine invisibility as potentiality.”