Sammy Seung-min Lee: Becoming Motherland

Museum of Contemporary Art Fries Building: Sammy Seung-min Lee explores sculpture, bookbinding, and installation in her interdisciplinary practice. Shaped by her nomadic youth and bicultural identity, she creates assemblages that bridge spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural divides. Lee’s materials — from paper to architectural elements — and her adaptation of traditional techniques reimagine the relationship between the East and the West and connect tradition with contemporaneity.

Lee’s solo exhibition at MCA Denver, Becoming Motherland probes complex personal dynamics of diaspora, moving and migration through playful and poignant works that explore notions of nostalgia, longing, memory, utopia, and home. In recent years, Lee has used a distinctive paper-casting technique to create skin-like forms that echo everyday objects like luggage and table-ware. Her ​“paper-skins” are a material that embodies memory, vulnerability, and resilience. They anchor her practice and serve as both shield and porous barrier, mediating between interior and exterior worlds while grounding explorations of migration, identity, and belonging.