Kyu Sang Lee

Still Here Tomorrow to High Five You Yesterday
30 January – 19 September, 2019
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa.

Still Here Tomorrow to High Five You Yesterday, an exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, explores the different ways in which artists, performers, writers and architects tackle the complexities inherent within the dual concepts of Utopia and progress. Exploring emergent spaces that exist both in the realm of the mind and in the physical unknown, the exhibition points critically to the mirages, metaphors, stereotypes and matrixes of progress.

Through the works of contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora, the exhibition engages with the phenomenon of travel and migration through imagined, alternative realities that reference both fixed and immaterial locations.

Musician Sun Ra speaks of ‘unknown things, impossible things, ancient things and potential things’. In this way, the exhibition enters alternative stratospheres, allowing viewers to explore the ‘multiple simultaneous utopianisms’ (Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum) that inhabit our perceptions and worlds.

The artists in this exhibition propose many different concepts of time, a time that is no longer linear but cyclical, inter-dimensional and experiential. The artworks suggest an infinite realm of potential transformation – where past, present and future collapse into one. Evoking a place yet-to-be-known, the exhibition challenges the idea that utopia is synonymous with escapist pursuits. Instead, the works of the artists on exhibition offer a poetic critique of the norms of existing societies.

Born from notions of space travel and the tropes of Afro-futurist movements, the exhibition is conceived in chapters that unfold and progress presenting a plurality of post-colonial futures. In this way, the exhibition shapes and shifts in the gallery, disrupting and distorting the constructs of utopia and its opposite: dystopia, encouraging more nuanced perspectives on our shared futures.

Looking at the works of multiple artists, Chapter 2 provides an opportunity to re-read, re-examine and consider our relationship to time and space.

It seeks to interrogate alternative physical and metaphorical spaces, letting viewers explore imagined worlds, past spaces and potential future outcomes.

Kyu Sang Lee’s photographic artistic practice draws on his experience within distinct regions and cultures of the world and exhibits strong influences of Eastern, Western and African cultures.

Working in predominantly black and white photography, Sang Lee presents an interesting juxtaposition to ideas of the “lost” and are driven by the concept of time and fate. Interlocking these notions with photography, he focuses on constructing the realm of the metaphysical, the spiritual and the surreal.

Photography in South Africa indeed has been a violent one. People use images to influence and invade other minds. Posters and news, as images are works in a similar way. Just like heavy rain, one lives in a world with an overflow of information where one cannot always identify what is true. The more information flows, the more one forgets about oneself and eventually, one’s life becomes dominated by oblivion.

As an art student, Sang Lee was awarded the Simon Gerson Prize (2016) for his graduating body of work and was previously awarded the Cecil Skotnes Award for Most Promising Artist at Michaelis School of Fine Art, The University of Cape Town (2014). After graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2016, Sang Lee won the Celeste Prize for Photography & Digital Graphics (2017). He has exhibited with Eclectica on numerous occasions and has exhibited both locally and internationally.

The series titled, The Sound Of Light-Sequence I-III by Kyu Sang Lee (made in collaboration with Martin Wilson) is featured in Zeitz MOCAA’s Afrofuturist exhibition, Still here tomorrow to high five you yesterday… (2019). - Zeitz MOCAA