Mire Lee has transformed the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall into a grotesque industrial inversion of all that should remain on the inside. The artist’s new sculptural installation reimagines the gallery space as a fantastical power station, or perhaps a living factory, churning organic forms and bodily matter out of an imposing twenty-three foot long hanging turbine. Suspended from the ceiling are porous, skin-like sculptures, reminiscent of a butcher’s shop; something all too bodily, all too tangible.
Lee is interested in exposing what should not be seen – in turning the inside out. She blends the industrial, concrete harshness of the installation space with the anatomical, flesh-like quality of her work, creating an unsettling atmosphere of both vulnerability and grotesqueness. Open Wound seems to play with the notion of the abject, forcing viewers to face their intrinsic reaction to the installation.
The space lends itself to Lee’s sculptural pieces; the tall, lofty ceiling of the Turbine Hall allows for Lee’s own turbine to spin with an eerie, echoing, industrial soundscape, generating a machine-like din and creating a noisily uncanny atmosphere in the gallery. Art is subjective, but if Lee’s aim is to provoke visceral reactions and invoke emotion, Open Wound has achieved its aim.
“Tate Modern London architecture #dailyshoot” by Leshaines123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.