Yun Lee ⛓️ 이윤
📧 talktoyunlee@gmail.com
Performer 퍼포머 Choreographer 안무가

Image courtesy of ©friezeofficial.

Hello. This is Yun Lee.

I work at the intersection of dance and visual art here in Los Angeles.

Photo: Erik Elizondo. goo, Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts.

My family emigrated from North Korea to the South and to various states in America upon the outbreak of the Korean War. This has led me to center dance and performance projects that deal with intersectionality, displacement, and questions of belonging throughout my artistic career.

Photo: Danny Young. Performing Export Loop (1) by Andrea Soto, presented by Jade Solus at Dotted Line Gallery.

The value systems in my choreographic practice were shaped by my studies in Comparative Literature with postcolonial scholars at Yonsei University and the work extends into the creation of fiction, nonsense, an embodied questioning of what is sensical.

I’m drawn to fracturing codified ways of behaving and speaking in private and public spaces.

Performing Five Acts and a Monologue by Young In Hong at Art Sonje Center.

Within a “correct” way to say a word, within ways to stand and walk at a certain speed lie the exercise of power, the enforcement of norms that determines who belongs and who does not.

Captured with ainsley tharp and Kevin Corcoran during Winslow House Residency by Tyler Rai.

Dance generates heat in the body. It softens the tongue and releases thought.

In Jang Sumi's Social Sensorial Collectiveness, performed at Frieze Live.

Dance can melt structures that constitute language, signs and rules embedded in how we move through the world. As a collaborator to artists of other disciplines, I often question how we can work with what already is.

Photo: Rachel Keene. Solo performance presented at Movement Research at the Judson Church.

Lately, I’ve been wondering: if language structures cognition, what happens when that language warps?

Photo: Terri Kim. Two Anchors by Yi Yunyi, performed at Windmill Perform's Open Air Festival.

⛓️

I’m a masters student at CalArts in choreography.

+++ I was a danceWEB scholar at ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival in 2023, funded by Arts Council Korea and Life Long Burning. From 2023-2025 I taught Contemporary Dance, Strength and Conditioning, Dance for Everybody, and Contact Improvisation at Smith College and Advanced Composition for BFA students in Dance at University of Massachusetts, Amherst as a teaching fellow. I also had the pleasure of guest teaching at Hampshire College for Lailye Weidman’s course Dancing Coalition: Contact, Partnering, and Ensemble Improvisation.

Photo: JE Kim. Taken during Kim's Improvisation Lab at Amherst College.

My most recent collaborations were with choreographer Su-Mi Jang, dance artist Tyler Rai, visual artists Gyun Hur, Young In Hong, Yi Yunyi, Jennifer Boyd, and Sining Zhu.

Photo: Chinning Liu. Performance made with Sining Zhu, presented at Cevera Yoon Gallery.

Please send work inquiries to: talktoyunlee@gmail.com

*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺🇰🇷༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

로스앤젤레스와 서울을 기반으로 활동하며, 무용과 시각예술의 교차점에서 작업합니다. 저의 안무 작업은 연세대 언더우드국제대학에서의 학문적 경험, 특히 포스트식민주의 이론이 강조되는 환경 속에서 형성된 사유 방식을 바탕으로, 허구, 넌센스, 그리고 신체를 통한 ‘감각적 질문’으로 확장됩니다. 이는 무엇이 이성적인가, 무엇이 정상인가를 탐구하는 과정으로 이어집니다.

2023년, 한국문화예술위원회와 Life Long Burning의 지원으로 임펄스탄츠 페스티벌에서 danceWEB 장학생으로 선정되었습니다. 2023년부터 2025년까지 Smith College에서 무용을 전공하며 졸업할 때까지 티칭펠로우 장학생이었고 현재는 캘리포니아 예술대학(California Institute of the Arts)에서 안무를 전공하고 있습니다.

최근에는 말하기의 구조를 해체하는 작업에 집중하고 있습니다. 신체에 열을 발생시키고, 유연한 혀를 작동시켜 언어를 구성하는 구조를 녹여 문법의 규칙과 단어의 발화 방식을 가지고 놉니다. 어떤 단어를 ‘정확하게’ 전달하는 방식 속에는 권력이 작동합니다—누가 소속되고 누가 배제되는지를 규정하는 보이지 않는 규범이 존재합니다. 저의 실험은 하나의 질문을 제기합니다: 언어가 사고를 구조화한다면, 그 언어가 휘어졌을 때 어떤 일이 벌어질까요?

최근 퍼포머로 참여한 작업은 한국의 독립운동과 노동운동의 중심에 있었던 여성들을 소환한 홍영인 작가의 다섯극과 모놀로그 (아트선재센터)에서의 퍼포먼스가 있습니다. 한 관객은 저의 퍼포먼스가 “마치 ‘범지구적, 범존재적 자기기억에 접속하기’처럼 보인다” 라고 표현했습니다 (—임서희, 관객). 그 외에도 2024년 프리즈 라이브에서 초연된 장수미 안무가의 사회 감각적 집합성, 허견 작가의 우리의 어머니들, 우리의 물, 우리의 평화 전시에서 발표한 솔로 작업 goo가 있습니다. 2025년에 윈드밀퍼포먼스의 기획 Open Air 프로그램에서 이윤이 작가의 두 앵커에 출연했습니다.

작업문의: talktoyunlee@gmail.com

last updated June, 2026

Introduction Instagram Export Loop (1), 2026 Untitled Guitar Solo, 2025

Two Anchors, 2025 goo, 2025 bonebag, 2024 I’ve been thinking about control, 2023 Spectacle, 2021-2022

Untitled Guitar Solo

Introduction

Instagram

Export Loop (1), 2026

Untitled Guitar Solo, 2025

Two Anchors, 2025

goo, 2025

bonebag, 2024

I’ve been thinking about control, 2023

Spectacle, 2021-2022