Sooyeong Lee

Mindful Practice: Kitchen as Studio

Presented by Eyelevel: Food for Thoughts

Friday, September 22, 2017 - 9am - 11:30am

Sooyeong Lee at Jordan Bennett & Lori Blondeau’s performance “Samqwan/Nipiy.” Photo: LP Chiasson and Festival Inspire.

Sooyeong Lee at Jordan Bennett & Lori Blondeau’s performance “Samqwan/Nipiy.” Photo: LP Chiasson and Festival Inspire.

For this talk, the artist will be serving Miyeokgook, a traditional Korean soup typically cooked for loved ones, it represents the gift of comfort and health and is often served to new mothers, when one is sick, or as a birthday meal. This intimate talk will take place in a domestic setting, harnessing the sense of communal cooking the artist experienced as a child. Lee will be speaking about her past work ‘Birthday Soup for My Father’, in which she prepared this soup to cope with witnessing her father’s illness—as an act and labour of love and compassion through a performance of care. The artist will also be serving tangerines as dessert and asking us to reflect and meditate on our anxieties and fears through the practice of mindfulness around consuming food. At the end of the meal, she would like us to honour this experience of caring, preparing and cooking the ingredients for those who have taught us countless things in the kitchen, and thus life.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

For this talk, the artist will be serving Miyeokgook, a traditional Korean soup typically cooked for loved ones, it represents the gift of comfort and health and is often served to new mothers, when one is sick, or as a birthday meal. This intimate talk will take place in a domestic setting, harnessing the sense of communal cooking the artist experienced as a child. Lee will be speaking about her past work ‘Birthday Soup for My Father’, in which she prepared this soup to cope with witnessing her father’s illness—as an act and labour of love and compassion through a performance of care. The artist will also be serving tangerines as dessert and asking us to reflect and meditate on our anxieties and fears through the practice of mindfulness around consuming food. At the end of the meal, she would like us to honour this experience of caring, preparing and cooking the ingredients for those who have taught us countless things in the kitchen, and thus life.

This 2.5 hour talk will take place as attendees share food and discussion with the artist. This intimate talk will take place in a home on 47 Highland Ave. There are steps leading up to the main entrance and there is an accessible ground level entrance behind the house. There are three bathrooms, with one located on the main floor.

Sooyeong Lee, “Bun Lady,” 2016. Performance documentation.

Sooyeong Lee, “Bun Lady,” 2016. Performance documentation.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sooyeong Lee is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto whose practice primarily investigates the human form as an instrument of performance. Lee is fascinated by what makes all of us vulnerable in the transformation through aging, injuries, fears and trauma. In her work, Lee surveys the absence of the body, the figure underneath the skin, the delicate process of aging and mortality. She deconstructs objects associated with the human body such as a suit or a dress shirt exploring the qualities of the mechanical and the conformed, while food is often used as a metaphor for the qualities of the organic and decayed.