Early-career retrospective on view at Palacio Consistorial in Cartagena, Spain

timmyhlee
Jul 21
2 min read

I am thrilled to present my early-career survey "Between Bodies and Borders: Queer Diasporic Cartographies of Timothy Hyunsoo Lee" on view at the Palacio Consistorial de Cartagena in Cartagena, Spain.

On the occasion of the 30th edition of Cartagena's La Mar de Musicas festival, in which South Korea is the guest country for, the exhibition brings together works that span over a decade of my interdisciplinary practice.

From the exhibition text (translated into English):

"Between Bodies and Borders: Queer Diasporic Cartographies of Timothy Hyunsoo Lee is a retrospective that spans over a decade of Lee’s deeply personal and materially rich artistic practice. From his early explorations of psychological landscapes to his recent investigations into Korean folklore, diaspora, queer identity, and intergenerational memory, the works gathered in this exhibition trace the evolution of an artist who is both cartographer and witness—a chronicler of the complexities of belonging and surviving.

Lee, a Korean-American artist trained in neuroscience and art, has sought since the beginning to represent the invisible: anxiety, migration, trauma, and queer identity. His practice merges the empirical with the poetic, the spiritual with the bodily. Through pattern and metaphor, the unspeakable becomes visible: mental illness takes on fractal form; diaspora becomes a wandering ghost; the queer body is simultaneously masked and revealed.

...

Taken together, these works do not form a linear narrative, but a constellation of symbols, experiences, and ghosts—both personal and collective. In Timothy Hyunsoo Lee’s work, trauma takes form, memory is gilded, and the queer diasporic body can finally float, resist, and be seen."