2024 LAB ARTIST

Helen Lee (they/she) is a Queer Asian Chicago-born interdisciplinary artist raised by immigrant parents from South Korea. They received an MFA with a focus in Performance and Film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Dance with a minor in Theatre from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. They have been teaching yoga, meditation and mindfulness since 2007. That same year, they formed Momentum Sensorium, a project-based company that has created and choreographed for See Chicago Dance, Out of Site, APIDA Arts Festival, and sometimes in unconventional locations such as lighthouses, train stations, and hallways. Much of their work focuses on the senses, death, and the entanglement of light/shadow, summer/winter, joy/grief. They have presented works in the US, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Iceland, Finland and Canada. Helen was selected for 2022 Newcity Breakout Artist and awarded Chicago Artist Coalition’s SPARK Grant. They have been an Artist in Residence at Chicago Artists Coalition, Chicago Cultural Center, and Links Hal with a current residency at High Concept Labs. They are continually working on Black and Asian allyship, collective healing, and reflecting on the meaning of the celebration of Asian stories, bodies, and voices.

Current Practice/Project: Each of us carries a history within us. This history within us this connection to our ancestors, our memories, our histories are ones we can choose to embrace or erase. Does this make us healers or killers? Everyday we live, we move closer to death. If we can sit with ourselves and sit in that darkness, there may be some answers that will be uncovered and possible healing along the way.