Sammy Lee

Sammy Lee works across moving image, expanded media, and spatial installation to create immersive worlds shaped by mythic patterns, intuitive mappings, and expanded ways of knowing.

Attuned to the entanglement between physical landscapes and inner topographies, Lee’s works reveal how environments—both real and symbolic—reflect shifting states of consciousness. Often collaborating with musicians and performers, she explores audiovisual media as both an affective force and a tool of influence—invoking heightened states of perception while also operating as a mechanism of synchronization and soft power.

Shaped by a transnational upbringing, her practice resists fixed borders, tracing the fluid interplay of media, mythology, and cultural resonance across global networks. Her works exist as portals—sites of transformation where bodies dissolve into light, forgotten landscapes echo with memory, and perception itself is reconfigured.

Sammy Lee is based in London, UK. Her solo exhibitions and projects include Cornucopia, Stephanie Kim Gallery, New York, USA (2024); Mirror 1: The Sea, with Sarah Shin, SWAY, Barry, UK (2022); Aviary, Tate St Ives commission, UK (2021). Selected group exhibitions include: Ground Seoul, South Korea (2024); UNESCO Centre for Documentary Heritage, Cheongju, South Korea (2023); Jeju International Peace Centre, South Korea (2023); Madberry Farmhouse, Seoul, South Korea (2023); Science Gallery London, UK (2023); Myungwon Museum, Seoul, South Korea (2022); MUTEK Montreal, Canada (2021). She previously co-founded Universal Assembly Unit (2013-2020), staging media art installations at institutions and festivals such as Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre, London Design Festival, Roundhouse and Nuit Blanche Paris. She holds an architecture degree from the Architectural Association and a PgDip in sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London. Since 2025, she co-directs Standard Deviation, a multidisciplinary collective exploring the coincidence of geometric, psychic and inhabited spaces.