Mire Lee (*1988) is known for her visceral, kinetic installations that probe the tension between eroticism, vulnerability and decay. Informed by her background in sculpture and influences from body horror, fetish culture and poetry, she experiments with an eclectic combination of industrial materials – including silicone, concrete, PVC tubing, lubricants, machinery, electric motors and pumps – to create works that teeter between growth and collapse. Her environments ooze, throb and rumble, evoking both bodily and mechanical functions and resembling living organisms that conjure a sense of the grotesque that is as seductive as it is unsettling.
Photo: Timo Ohler
Mire Lee
Secession, Vienna
June 12–August 30, 2026
Mire Lee’s work occupies a visceral space where the boundaries between machine, body, and psyche collapse. Her kinetic sculptures are often made with motors, silicone, steel, and lubricants and form organisms that are both tender and grotesque. Moving in convulsive, almost breath-like rhythms, these works suggest an uneasy vitality that hovers between the animate and the alien. Rather than reproducing the human body, Lee exposes its internal logic, its functions, breakdowns, and the systems it depends on. Her installations evoke raw physicality while foregrounding vulnerability, violence, and desire. They often generate a form of affective discomfort, inviting sustained attention without offering resolution. The spaces Lee constructs feel humid and ruinous, operating as conditions of exposure. In these works, movement becomes a language of survival, repair, and persistent vulnerability.
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