A glass is not just a container, just as a cup does not exist solely to hold a drink. The objects that move through our days hold repeated gestures, memories and habits we rarely pay attention to. South Korean artist Lee Jimin starts precisely from these familiar presences to turn them into something unexpected: lightweight textile sculptures that preserve the shape of objects without reproducing their substance. The result is a body of work that moves between craft, design and contemporary art, inviting us to look at what remains when matter is taken away.
In Lee Jimin’s practice, fabric stops being a mere surface to decorate and becomes a tool for rethinking volume. The artist applies textile materials to thin structures, built from linear elements, so as to recreate the outline of recognizable objects while leaving their interior empty. It is not a matter of covering an existing form, but of understanding how little is needed for it to remain identifiable.
It is precisely this tension that makes her works compelling: a structure can suggest the solidity of an object without having its weight; a textile surface can outline a volume without fully closing it. Absence is neither hidden nor filled, but becomes an integral part of the composition. Thus, what we normally consider a secondary detail, the inner space of a cup, for example, takes on a new centrality.
With Transparent Imagination (2024), Lee Jimin focuses this research on the cup, an everyday object so common that it risks becoming invisible to our eyes. In the project, the vessel loses its immediate function and becomes a starting point for reflecting on the gestures we repeat every day and on the personal experiences that settle within them.
The relationship between what seems real and what exists only in appearance also emerges in the name Fakery, which evokes the idea of a fake bakery, a sort of shop in which the imagery tied to everyday objects is reworked through the language of textiles. The reference to a familiar place, associated with the production and sale of tangible products, introduces a small short circuit: here, forms are not made to be used, but to be observed and reinterpreted.
Drinking something, stopping for a break, holding a cup in your hands: these are simple actions, yet tied to different sensations and memories for each of us. The artist uses transparency and empty space to open the object up to these interpretations, without imposing a single meaning. The form remains recognizable, but its function expands: it no longer serves only to hold something, it can also become a space onto which to project emotions and perceptions.
Born in South Korea in 1999, Lee Jimin graduated in Fiber Arts from Ewha Womans University in Seoul in 2022. In 2024 she took part in an artist residency at Marunuma Art Park in Japan, where she also presented the solo exhibition 続く in Asaka. Among the earlier stages of her career is also 차 린, a 2023 solo exhibition hosted by Magpie & Tiger Sinsa Tea Room in Seoul. Her work sits in a territory where manual precision meets formal experimentation. Fabric, a material often associated with softness and flexibility, is used to give stability to lightweight forms, while the thin structures allow objects to keep their identity without turning into compact masses. It is a balance that demands attention both to construction and to what is left out.
Lee Jimin thus shows that changing the way we look at an object does not require distorting it. Sometimes it is enough to work on its matter, lighten its volume and let emptiness tell us something new. What remains is no longer just the silhouette of a known thing, but an open possibility: an invitation to look more closely at what accompanies, often without being noticed, our daily lives.
