M HKA presents Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now, a comprehensive overview of the practice of Lee Bul, one of Asia’s leading contemporary artists.
A major international partnership for M HKA with M+, Hong Kong, and Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul.
Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now
12.11.2026-14.03.2027, M HKA
Lee Bul is an extraordinary artist that has made profound contributions to the Korean, Asian and global art scenes over the past four decades. Emerging in the late 1980s with works critically engaging with South Korea’s shifting sociopolitical landscape, she forged a multidisciplinary practice spanning sculpture, installation and two-dimensional art. Her practice interrogates the evolving relationships between the body and society, humanity and technology, nature and civilisation, as well as the underlying political forces that influence these dynamics.
With a radical sense of invention and vitality, Lee offers insights into the past and present of humanity while envisioning new possibilities for the future. Her exhibition Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now will feature more than 200 key artworks from across her career. It will highlight how her work has engaged with themes of utopian modernity, the historical avant-garde in art and architecture, and the rise and fall of ideas aimed at reinventing the world. Now in the fourth decade of her career, she is considered a pioneering figure to a younger generation of artists influenced by the sensibilities of her practice, from her early iconoclastic performances to her multi-sensory installations that have pushed the formal and conceptual boundaries of visual art. Utilising both floors of M HKA, the exhibition will be one of the most substantial solo exhibitions in the museum’s history.
Lee Bul’s works have been exhibited in major institutions throughout the world, including the Seoul Museum of Art; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Hayward Gallery, London; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and Art Sonje Center, Seoul. In 2024, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, commissioned Lee to create sculptures for the niches of the museum’s iconic Fifth Avenue façade.
Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now is co-organised by M+ and Leeum Museum of Art in collaboration with Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA). Following its presentation at M HKA, the exhibition will travel to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Canada ending in late 2027.
Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now is co-curated by June Young Kwak, Head of Exhibitions, Leeum Museum of Art, and Doryun Chong, Artistic Director and Chief Curator at M+, with Heyeon Kim, Curator at Leeum and Sunny Cheung, Curator of Design and Architecture at M+. The presentation at M HKA is organised by Nav Haq, Associate Director at M HKA.