Within a temporal parenthesis, it is assumed that we could imagine all sensations from all times in such a way that distances compress indefinitely. A space previously considered a “non-place” thus becomes the site of infinite and simultaneous potentialities—experienced both prospectively and retrospectively—while the gallery space becomes an aggregation of emotional, physical, geographical, or conceptual distances. Sinae Lee brings forth absence and distance, both equally visceral, to stimulate and resuscitate numbness and everyday gestures, transforming them from their roles as derisively opaque facades into acts of pure affectivity.

By layering affective landmarks onto unmapped and undiscovered spaces (sometimes interior), Sinae opens a portal into the structurality of the everyday, allowing “nonsense”—such as writing directions between past and future embodied in the very act of hitchhiking between these temporal dimensions—to reveal itself as a vital necessity. Remnants (such as the debris of a fragile home made of biscuits) become sustenance for other species (including birds), while the scaffolding of future dreams halts the present, anchoring it in a past where we once desired something. Sinae thus blends different timelines to remind us that the “gap” at the airport—between arrival and departure, presence and parting—is the very matrix of individual life: not so much the act of waiting, but the projection of a future redrawn into the present, onto which the memory of the past is grafted.

Departure itself becomes, therefore, a pretext for a parting that never truly occurs; for time, much like meaning, seems never to crystallize itself enough to fully consume the loss. For Lee, absence emerges as an active principle of intensification—a medium in which the connection continues to produce signs, images, projections, and rituals of attachment. In this fragile economy, what seems secondary—the remnant, the banal conversation, the precarious object, the interval between arrival and departure—acquires a particular insistence, as if love could be read more clearly precisely through its indirect forms.

Spaces of transit and domestic remains thus retain more than just the matter of a passage; they become sites of condensation for a proximity that no longer depends on simultaneous presence, yet refuses to be evacuated along with it. What is prolonged is a form of dispersed attachment, transmitted through minor signs, silent returns, and everything that remains active after the encounter has retreated. Sinae Lee gives form to precisely this persistence of closeness. Her works open, in fact, a space where distance loses its function as the end of a relationship and acquires the consistency of a diffuse duration—perhaps even the most intense form of connection: that which dwells in the interval.

Sinae Lee (b. 1989, Seoul, South Korea) is a visual artist based between Paris and Seoul. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy (2021), she works across video, installation, and performance, exploring the physical and psychological distances between South Korea and France. Since moving to Paris in 2015, her practice has focused on the experience of displacement and everyday life as a foreigner, examining how distance, time differences, and mobility shape relationships and senses of belonging.
Lee received the Prix Contemporain 2022 from Revue Point Contemporain. Her work has been shown internationally, including Sinae Lee in Paris at L’Ahah, Paris (2024), the Hors Pistes festival at Centre Pompidou, and exhibitions in Seoul, Saint-Étienne, and Caen. Recent projects include a duo exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Photography, Photo House (2026). She was a resident at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2024), and in 2025 took part in a residency in Iași and Țibănești, Romania, as part of a residency program supported by the Institut français.