OCHI is pleased to present Hide and Seek, an online viewing room featuring new works by Brooklyn-based artist Adehla Lee. The works will be featured from March 8 – April 2, 2022.

Visually combining daydream bright hues with allusions to personal experiences and generational trauma, Lee creates scenes of self-referential portraiture that seek to question visibility and invisibility in Korean diaspora. Drawing from a background in commercial art and design, the vibrant pinks, greens, and blues are carefully placed as Lee translates intimate memories and histories into compressed metaphorical spaces. Lee’s figures can be found in pools full of plants, peering at themselves in bathroom mirrors, peeking through openings in fabric, and behind fences—sets that help articulate their pensive, shy, curious, or cautious moods. Inspired by her defiant and creative matriarchal lineage—Lee’s grandmother was a Shaman, her aunt was a Buddhist priest, and her mother is a photographer and a gardener—Lee’s paintings embrace ritualistic remedies for healing.

In domestic scenes, manicured landscapes, and imagined non-spaces Lee mixes elements of fantasy and realism to create introspective interpretations of her personal history. The figures in Best Friends (2021) huddle face to face, a hand gently cupping a cheek, each gesture exuding a necessary tenderness. Lee adorns her figures with elements of the natural world—an acknowledgement of traditional Korean femininity—though Lee’s plants and flowers are often metaphors for submission and docility. Green hair and flowing, curled locks draw direct parallels to patterns and colors found in the environment, while their voluminous, tangled forms reference verdant mountain ranges. Roses appear and reappear as markers of innocence and beauty, framing the subjects which hold them.

Yet within each vivid, vibrant setting, the anxious expression of Lee’s protagonists form a raw depiction of vulnerability. Eyes glance aside or down or even gaze into the distance in potential reverie or possible disassociation. Within the faces of each subject the works uncover themselves, reminiscing on the memories Lee has experienced first-hand from their safe spaces. While growing, healing, and evolving, Lee inspires a beautiful world to bloom.

Adehla Lee (b. 1983, Busan, South Korea) makes paintings which address female vulnerability and the power to persevere when faced with constant adversity. Remnants of complex familial and political traumas radiate through her works as she reflects on her own expansive history. Raised by strong, spiritual women in a patriarchal household and society, Lee combines Korean histories and contemporary feminist narratives. She received her BFA from Hongik University, South Korea and an MFA from School of Visual Arts, NYC, New York. Lee’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the ISE Cultural Foundation, Allegra LaViola Gallery, and Interstate Projects in New York, NY; Karst Gallery in Plymouth, United Kingdom; and Common Center and Space art1 in Seoul, South Korea. Her work is held in the collection of Arsenal Contemporary Art in New York, NY and Montreal, Canada. Lee lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.