Sorondo Projects is presenting the compelling photographic work of Korean-Venezuelan artist Suwon Lee at Paris Photo 2025, marking a significant milestone for both the gallery and the artist in their first collaborative participation at the prestigious international art fair. Lee's latest series, titled "La Montaña Sagrada" (The Sacred Mountain), represents a pivotal moment in her artistic career as she expands her visual language while revisiting the core conceptual themes that define her practice.
The new series explores the complex relationship between personal identity and geographical territory, with Lee approaching landscape photography from a deeply introspective perspective. Rather than viewing mountains and natural spaces as external environments to be documented, the artist treats them as extensions of memory and inner emotional experience. In Lee's artistic vision, the mountain serves dual purposes as both a sanctuary and a reflective surface, creating a space where fragmented aspects of identity can find both emotional grounding and temporal stability.
Lee's creative process begins with vintage postcards featuring sacred mountains, which she transforms through an innovative technique of recovery and healing. She applies multiple layers of oil pigments in soft and metallic tones directly onto the photographic surfaces, fundamentally altering their original character. This intervention creates what she describes as "hybrid territories," where traditional photography evolves into something entirely new – a palimpsest where historical records and contemporary perceptions exist simultaneously within the same visual space.
Each carefully applied pictorial layer functions to suspend time between what viewers can clearly see and what remains partially hidden or veiled. This technique reveals Lee's distinctive approach to attention and observation, which combines sensory awareness, meditative practice, and spiritual contemplation. The resulting artworks propose a state of inner peace and spiritual tranquility that stands in sharp contrast to the difficulty of achieving such serenity in today's fast-paced, uncertain world.
In the context of widespread global uncertainty and social upheaval, Lee positions her artwork as a refuge for quiet contemplation and reflection. Her images present nature as persistent and majestic, emerging as the protector of a harmony that remains achievable despite contemporary challenges. The Sacred Mountain series extends the continuity of Lee's broader artistic practice, crossing boundaries of time and geography to create a meaningful reflection on memory, identity, and the human search for meaning within life's temporary nature.
Lee's artistic perspective combines serene visual beauty with subtle political undertones, creating work that resonates strongly with Sorondo Projects' curatorial philosophy and aesthetic sensibility. This collaboration reaffirms both the artist's and gallery's shared commitment to promoting artistic practices that successfully unite personal introspection with broader critical social awareness, establishing their partnership as one to watch in the contemporary art world.
