Sujin Lee's 'Where We Once Stood' Brings Anime-Influenced Portraits to Saatchi Yates

Korean painter Sujin Lee presents Where We Once Stood at Saatchi Yates, a series of acrylic portraits depicting intense-eyed young women placed within natural settings — sea winds, lashing rain, snow, plant life and sunset light. Lee describes girlhood as resistant to any single definition, saying the girl in her work functions less as a figure expressing emotion than as the emotion itself, before it has been named; sadness, beauty and fragility coexist in an undifferentiated state. Her aesthetic draws on anime and pop art, with exaggeratedly large eyes, gradient shading and a superflat graphic style that leaves the works' temporal and spatial setting ambiguous. Nature recurs throughout: raised on Jeju Island amid abundant flora, Lee now lives in Seoul, where she must actively seek the natural world she once took for granted. She cites nature's indifference — its refusal to protect or harm — as a parallel to her own method of placing a figure in a situation and observing without intervening. Alongside friendships with women, atmospheric music and cinema, she draws inspiration from books, valuing detailed descriptions of scenes and emotions and the freedom of precise language, though she remains shy about expressing herself so directly. She declines to define her paintings' atmosphere in words, leaving that to the viewer. The exhibition runs until 12 November 2026.