Artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Asia presents about 200 works spanning six decades at the Seoul Museum of Art

The Seoul Museum of Art is presenting Lynn Hershman Leeson: First Person Plural, a survey examining how technology has reshaped the body, identity and human relationships.

Running through Feb. 21, 2027, the exhibition is Hershman Leeson’s first solo museum show in Asia. About 200 drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, films and interactive media installations trace more than 60 years of her practice.

Born in 1941, the American media artist and filmmaker began by addressing the female body and social identity during the 1960s and 1970s. Her work later expanded through video, computers, the internet, artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

The English title, First Person Plural, refers to the grammatical form of “we” and comes from her long-running Electronic Diaries series. It reflects her view of identity as something formed and altered through relationships rather than a single fixed entity. The Korean title, which translates as “My [Selves],” uses programming-style brackets to evoke identities copied and reconstructed within technological systems.

The exhibition is divided into six sections that move from the body and social roles to screens, networks, data, AI and genetic engineering.

An early work, Breathing Machine III (1968), developed from the artist’s experience of receiving treatment inside an oxygen tent while pregnant and suffering from heart disease. Hershman Leeson combined wax casts of her face and body with machinery and sound. Sensors activate breathing and recorded voices when viewers approach, giving a fixed sculptural body the appearance of responding to its surroundings.

Her exploration of identity became a social experiment in Roberta Breitmore. Beginning in the 1970s, Hershman Leeson created a fictional woman with a prescribed appearance, gestures and lifestyle. Roberta obtained a driving licence and bank account, placed advertisements and interacted with people through existing social systems. The project demonstrated how institutions, documentation and the perceptions of others can turn a constructed persona into a socially recognised identity.

Interactive works including Lorna (1979–84) and Deep Contact (1984) place viewers inside the narrative. In Lorna, visitors use a remote control to influence the choices of an agoraphobic woman who experiences the outside world through television and telephone. Deep Contact uses a touchscreen, with different points of physical contact producing different episodes.

Korean subtitles have been added to both works for the Seoul exhibition. The Korean version of Lorna marks the first time one of Hershman Leeson’s interactive media works has been presented in a language other than English.

Later projects consider surveillance and relationships with non-human agents. CyberRoberta (1996/2026) uses cameras, web technology and a robotic doll to extend vision beyond the physical body while placing users in the position of remote observers.

The web-based chatbot Agent Ruby (1998–2002) changes its expression and responds to conversation. Created before contemporary generative AI, the work asks whether people can form emotional relationships with machines and how the identity of a conversational agent should be understood.

The exhibition also includes the films Conceiving Ada (1997) and Teknolust (2002), both made with actor Tilda Swinton. The first connects computer pioneer Ada Lovelace with the present through digital technology, while the second uses cyborg clones and biotechnology to examine desire, love and identity.

The final section extends these questions into genetic engineering, where identity is no longer limited to social or digital representation but can involve changes to biological composition itself.

Lynn Hershman Leeson: First Person Plural runs through Feb. 21, 2027, across the second- and third-floor galleries and Crystal Gallery at the Seoul Museum of Art’s Seosomun Main Building. The museum is located at 61 Deoksugung-gil in Jung District, Seoul, and is closed on Mondays and Jan. 1.

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