Soo Hyun Lee (b. 1998) is a Korean artist whose practice explores how individuals relate to social values such as care, shame, resistance, and love. 

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Through painting and drawing, she captures the layered complexity of these values, particularly as they emerge within personal relationships and embodied experiences. Her work often reveals emotional terrains where softness and violence coexist. In the recent series *I have seen this coming*, she investigates the paradox of care, which is at once nurturing and consuming. Each character carries a layered timeline that embodies conflicting impulses of intimacy, protection, and detachment. 

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In *My soft hands became a sword one day*, the artist explores the transformation of bodies historically perceived as passive or vulnerable into sites of resistance. A central figure, initially posed in submission, reveals a sharp reversal by devouring a severed arm while one of her own hands morphs into a sword. Agency is reclaimed not through direct confrontation but through metamorphosis, a strategy rooted in her ongoing investigation into power, gendered embodiment, and resistance.

 

Influenced by South Korean feminist movements, in which subtle gestures such as sticky notes or K-pop lyrics become radical acts, the artist draws strength from the fragile and marginal. She is interested in moments when soft, seemingly powerless tools become the only means of resistance available to those without access to conventional power. Since relocating to London, she has incorporated her lived experience as a bilingual Asian woman into her work, using the frictions of translation to express the tensions between cultures that shape her visual language.