Moka Lee

Overview

Moka Lee (b. 1996) is a figurative painter who is known to paint images of portraits, still lifes, landscapes that explore relational dynamics between subject matter, viewer, and the artist. With inspirations as diverse as social media, analog photography, motion picture, and Modern Master paintings, the artist’s paintings are charged with unsettling emotions of conflict, pervasive in society - yet often unsurfaced.

Lee’s painterly techniques call attention to the process of painting which is similar to that of a digital printer. The paintings are physically flat yet they are composites of multiple suffused layers. The subject matter, often derived from social media, declines straightforward interpretation and is filled with innuendos and double entendres. These dissonances created within the work can universally be understood but are strangely connected to the artist’s own identity.

Moka Lee has had a number of solo exhibitions in the past years, including Gallery ANOV, Seoul, Korea and Yugiche, Busan, Korea. She has taken part in numerous group exhibitions, such as ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul, Korea; Chapter II, Seoul, Korea; Chang Ucchin Museum of Art, Yangju, Korea. Lee was awarded the DDP Prize at Asian Students and Young Artists Art Festival held in Seoul, Korea.

She lives and works in Seoul, South Korea, where she obtained BFA from Sejong University and is currently studying painting at the Korea National University of Arts.

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Works