Where We Once Stood

Saatchi Yates is pleased to present Where We Once Stood, the latest solo exhibition by Korean artist Sujin Lee, featuring a new body of paintings created between 2025 and 2026. Following a solo exhibition at TAO ART in Taipei, Lee turns her gaze further inward, tracing the emotional residues that remain after a moment has passed. Rather than depicting a particular event or scene, she is interested in what lingers in the body and memory once its details begin to fade: a quality of light, a silence, an atmosphere, or an emotion that resists being put into words. "The ripples within the mind take time to slowly subside. What remains, once the turbulence has passed?" - Sujin Lee Girls and nature remain central motifs in Lee's paintings. Her figures retain their steady, searching eyes and windblown hair, but now appear to inhabit the aftermath of an experience rather than the event itself. For Lee, the girl is not a specific person or age, but a vessel for feelings that are fragile, unfamiliar and difficult to articulate. Alienation, emptiness and uncertainty recur throughout her work, left deliberately unresolved so that viewers can project their own memories and experiences onto the image. Nature also assumes a greater presence in these paintings. Wind, snow, darkness, air and light are no longer simply settings, but become part of the emotional landscape itself. Lee works with greater looseness and instinct, allowing the boundaries between figure and landscape to become increasingly porous. Her girls seem to dissolve into the temperature, atmosphere and light around them, while nature becomes a way of expressing what language cannot precisely name.