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BLANKET STATEMENTS
SEULGI LEE COMBINES KOREAN PROVERBS – FROM ‘REPAIR THE COWSHED AFTER LOSING THE COW’ (= TOO LATE) TO ‘A FROG IN THE WELL’ (= NARROW MINDED) – WITH THE ANCIENT ART OF KOREAN QUILTING, TO MONUMENTAL EFFECT.
BY ANNEKA FRENCH
Seulgi Lee measured against her work. Vogue Korea 2019, Jan. (Seulgi Lee © Adagp Paris 2025)
PHOTO BY JI-HYUNG LEE
Seulgi Lee was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1972, but has lived in Paris since 1992. It was here that she studied at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. The artist has gone on to develop a rich and thoughtful multidisciplinary practice that combines stitched silk textiles, weaving, drawing and sculptures made in wood, glass and steel. She will often make meticulous gouache drawings that visualise her starting points before her ideas are further brought to life through collaboration with specialist artisans from across the world.
One of Lee’s most important ongoing series is Blanket Project U, which she began in 2014. This employs the traditional Korean technique of nubi, a quilted blanket method which is sadly in decline and which uses regular, straight, stitched lines. Lee’s blankets are typically large in scale (about 2m by 1.5m). She considers them to be sculptures as they are either wall-mounted with a small gap behind them or placed on low plinths on the floor. Both display methods emphasise the subtle three-dimensional qualities created by stitching across lining, wadding and front faces.