Julian Kyu Sang Lee is an artist working in photography and installation, examining the structures of cultural translation and historical pressure. For Lee, photography is not simply the outcome of image-making but a site where history and belonging, translation and disappearance, collide. An image always shows something while simultaneously rendering something else invisible. Lee calls this condition of the image the ‘Off-line IMAGE’.
What Lee means by the off-line image is not simply an image disconnected from the network. It is closer to an image that escapes the dominant gaze, algorithmic classification, political framing, and the order of rapid consumption. Today, images are ceaselessly drawn on-line: circulated instantly, interpreted, sorted, and increasingly converging toward smooth, averaged forms. Lee's off-line image, by contrast, resists full absorption into this flow.
This concept is deeply rooted in Lee's own biography. Born in Seoul, he spent his adolescence in Cape Town, South Africa, where he and his younger brother were the only Asian students at their school. The situation was not markedly different when he later moved to Germany to study at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (HGB Leipzig). Having lived at the periphery of Western society in both South Africa and Germany, his sense of being a perpetual outsider, never fully belonging anywhere, has profoundly shaped both his way of seeing the world and his way of working with images.
Lee renders visible what has been erased or pushed into the background by systems. This is not simply a matter of making the invisible visible, but of questioning what is taken to be central and what is relegated to the margins. His work addresses the precarious condition of those who live at the edges rather than the centre of society, and interrogates the dominant gaze and the social conditions we tend to accept as given.
The problem of the image today is sharpening along two fronts. The traditional photographic image appears to record reality, yet it produces entirely different meanings depending on what is cropped out, from what angle it is shown, and alongside what text it is placed. In other words, the image of the real is manipulated by context, and can be steered toward a particular meaning for political or cultural ends. The AI-generated image, by contrast, appears to create something new, but in fact yields a result close to the statistical average of countless existing images. Holding no position of its own, it outputs the safest, smoothest, most familiar image available.
Lee regards this as a critical danger. On one side, the image drifts away from truth through political framing; on the other, it is homogenised by AI and algorithms into averaged, predictable forms. The result, in either case, is that we encounter not the unfamiliar sensations or uncomfortable questions an image might hold, but only the repetition of what we already know. Lee's off-line image stands directly opposed to both of these dangers.
What Lee ultimately attends to, then, is the friction that remains within the image. He does not believe an image must be beautiful or complete. On the contrary, he holds that more thought can begin precisely when an image wavers, is left empty, or remains unresolved. He understands this blur not as a deficiency but as a more honest way of looking at the world. Rather than offering a single, clear truth, Lee's off-line image works through the friction and uncertainty that remain within it, compelling us to look at the world anew.
Recent exhibitions have been at the LUMA Arles, Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Deichtorhallen Hamburg. In 2017, Lee won the Celeste Prize in Photography in London, juried by Fatos Üstek. He has also had exhibitions in Cape Town and Paris and Leipzig, had a solo representation at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, AKAA Paris in 2018, and Zeitz MOCAA in 2019. In 2022, Lee opened a public programme at Documenta 15 in collaboration with the Nha San Collective.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2026
Off-line IMAGE, OCI Museum, Seoul, KR.
2023
Table of Contents, Bistro 21, Leipzig, DE.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026
DongGang International Photography Festival 2026, DongGang Museum of Photography, Yeongwol, KR.
Aether Commons: Refracted Cosmologies, Fundacja Stefana Gierowskiego. Warsaw, PL.
Gute Aussichten - Junge Deutsche Photografie 2024/25, Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, Nordhorn, DE.
2025
DOUBLE FEATURE: Gute Aussichten - Junge Deutsche Photografie 2024/25, PHOXXI Haus der
Photographie
Deichtorhallen Hamburg, DE.
Academy Positions [Berlin Art Week], Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin,
Gute Aussichten - Junge Deutsche Photografie 2024/25, Landesmuseum Koblenz, DE.
2024
Ostinato Interstice Rendering, Techne Sphere Leipzig, Leipzig. DE.
Myths Are Your Dream, Dreams Are My Myth, Werkschauhalle Spinnerei, Leipzig, DE.
Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents, LUMA Arles, Arles, FR.
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town. SA
Figures (In)Flux, Eclectica Contemporary, Cape Town. SA.
2023
LL Interspace: HOTPOT, Galerie KUB, Leipzig, DE.
FNB Art Joburg, Johannesburg, SA.
Ketterer Kunst Masterclass Preis für Junge Kunst, Munich, DE.
2022
Neighbours / Des Voisin.e.s, L’air Arts, Paris, FR.
Just Rolllllll, documenta fifteen, Kassel, DE.
2021
Between Strangers, Nuweland, Buren, NL.
Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, SA.
2020
11:11, Eclectica Contemporary, Cape Town, SA.
Peep Show, Cape Town, SA. [Online]
Art Rotterdam, Rotterdam, NL.
Tones, Eclectica Contemporary, Cape Town, SA.
2019
Satellite, Suburbia Contemporary, Cape Town, SA.
Still Here Tomorrow to High Five You Yesterday, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, SA.
Water Sculptures, as Part of the exhibition Yoko Ono: PEACE is POWER, Mdbk Leipzig, DE.
Cape Town Art Fair [Solo Project], Cape Town, SA.
2018
Also Known as Africa, Le Carreau du Temple, Paris, FR.
Throwing Shapes, Smith Studio, Cape Town, SA.
-nano 1.2, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town, SA.
Stop Stop Click, Eclectica Contemporary, Cape Town, SA.
Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, SA.
2017
Salad, Smith Studio, Cape Town, South Africa.
SS17, Gallery MOMO, Cape Town, South Africa.
Celeste Prize Finalists Exhibition, OXO Tower Wharf, London, UK.
Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, SA.
Be Kind, Please Rewind, Gallery MOMO, Cape Town, SA.
Marked, Eclectica Print Gallery, Cape Town, SA.
Paradise Regained, Eclectica Contemporary, Cape Town, SA.
2016
From Now to Then: Towards the Brilliant End, Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, SA.
Meditative Moments, Mullers Gallery, Cape Town, SA.
By Way of Hand, Cape Town School of Photography, Cape Town, SA.
Focus, Jan Royce Gallery, Cape Town, SA.
Publications
Aether Commons: Refracted Cosmologies
Gute Aussichten - Junge Deutsche Photographie 2024/25
Artthrob
Residencies
2023
L’air Arts, Atelier 11 Cite Falguiere, Paris, FR.
2017
Cape Town School of Photography, Cape Town, SA.
Lectures
2017
Cape Town School of Photography, Cape Town, SA.
Awards and nominations
2026
OCI Young Creatives, OCI Museum, Seoul, KR.
2025
Gute Aussichten - Junge Deutsche Photographie 2024/25 Winner
2024
Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents. Arles. FR
2023
Ketterer Kunst Masterclass Preis für Junge Kunst, München, DE.
2020
Minister of Defence Award in Moving Image Competition,
Ministry of Defence, South Korea.
2017
Celeste Prize Winner in Photography, Celeste Prize,
London, UK.
Celeste Prize Finalist, Celeste
Prize, London, UK.
2016
Simon Gerson Prize, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. SA.
2014
Cecil Skotnes Award for Most Promising Artist, Michaelis School, Cape Town, SA.
of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. SA.
Collections and Loans
2019
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa.
Stipends
2024
Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen. DE.
Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, KR.
Education
2018-2019, 2022-2024
Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig. DE.
[Meisterstudium]
2012 - 2016
Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, SA.