Seulgi Lee – SOUPE, 2024

Seulgi Lee uses techniques from traditional crafts and draws her artistic vocabulary from everyday objects. With their pared-down forms and colours, the works she creates explore notions of oral transmission, immaterial culture and the language system. Working in close collaboration with craftspeople from different countries, she draws on professional know-how and expertise, gathering stories and motifs, and seeking out collective gestures that span several cultures. She steers her practice towards simple, collaborative actions, regularly inviting the public to take part in making or consuming the works.

Seulgi Lee’s soup is as much an artistic as a gastronomic experience and it ties in with the colours of the Lyon twilight. During nocturnes on the Grandes Locos site, the public is invited to share this dish, prepared with the help of chef Emily Dader and made using local seasonal vegetables. As the bowls and the stove await the making and tasting of the soup, the orange hue of the walls evokes the darkening evening sky. Devised by Seulgi Lee as a kind of ritual, the performance creates a shared symbolism between the visitor’s body and the natural environment.