Jaye Rhee Korea, b. 1973

The work of Jaye Rhee comprises diverse media—video, photography,  dance, music, painting, and sculpture—making it a prime example of the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary art. While some scholars, critics, and curators have compared Rhee’s performance-based video installations to the experimental multimedia work of such internationally recognized artists as Bruce Nauman, Matthew Barney, and Kimsooja, her oeuvre resists easy categorization. Installations such as Tear (2002) deal with themes related to the human condition and physical impediments. Rhee is the focus, this time across four video screens that depict the artist  tearing through a large expanse of cloth with her body. The exaggerated sound of the fabric as it rips lends an unsettling, almost violent atmosphere to the work—one that clearly references feminist performance art of the 1960s and early 1970s, particularly Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964). Just as Ono implicated her audience by allowing them to cut off pieces of her clothing on stage, Rhee makes the viewer witness to her vulnerability as she willingly submits herself to the struggle at hand.