‘‘My work, in essence, records my concerns and process of growing up. It narrates and dramatises my life stories.’’ 

—JeeYoung Lee 

For her ongoing Stage of Mind series, Korean artist JeeYoung Lee (b.1983) seamlessly blends the real with artifice, transporting us to her inner landscape. To create the fantastical vision of Treasure Hunt, the artist painted her handmade paper grasshopper, wove wires together for the grass field and positioned tiny light bulbs for the fireflies before staging herself as the protagonist and then photographing the final composition. Here, we see Lee looking through a magnifying glass under moonlight, striving towards an impossible dream: to find her ‘needle in a haystack’. The inspiration was her childhood treasure hunts and visits to the countryside where she could hear crickets chirping among the fireflies. Lee’s creative process ends with the destruction of her meticulously handcrafted installation. ‘The process of destroying the stage,’ explains Lee, ‘allows me to transcend the complicated emotions that led me to create it in the first place.’  

The Seoul-based artist has exhibited her Stage of Mind series internationally, including at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the Singapore Art Museum and the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego.