Maia Ruth Lee: Bondage Baggage (PRE-ORDER)
Bondage Baggage is the first major monograph on the work of artist Maia Ruth Lee and focuses on her ongoing body of work of the same name. Working across painting, sculpture, photography, and film, Lee has crafted a visual lexicon that takes on the complexities of the self in times of dissonance and globalization. Lee was born in Busan, South Korea, grew up in Kathmandu and Seoul, spent over a decade in New York City, and has lived in recent years in Salida, Colorado.
Migration lies at the core of Lee’s experience and comes to form in works that often evoke maps, atlases, and banners with an underlying interest in language, translation, symbols, and signs. In Bondage Baggage, the body is also referenced, as the bound baggage and textile works metaphorically visualize the accumulations and contours of a life. This volume weaves images of the sculpture, paintings, prints, and installation works that comprise this series with an introductory essay by Jade Foster and correspondence between Lee and her community of friends and family around the world, letters that tackle the realities of motherhood, community, language/communication, independence/interdependence, and artmaking in this fraught geopolitical moment.
SHIPS FALL 2025
Bondage Baggage is the first major monograph on the work of artist Maia Ruth Lee and focuses on her ongoing body of work of the same name. Working across painting, sculpture, photography, and film, Lee has crafted a visual lexicon that takes on the complexities of the self in times of dissonance and globalization. Lee was born in Busan, South Korea, grew up in Kathmandu and Seoul, spent over a decade in New York City, and has lived in recent years in Salida, Colorado.
Migration lies at the core of Lee’s experience and comes to form in works that often evoke maps, atlases, and banners with an underlying interest in language, translation, symbols, and signs. In Bondage Baggage, the body is also referenced, as the bound baggage and textile works metaphorically visualize the accumulations and contours of a life. This volume weaves images of the sculpture, paintings, prints, and installation works that comprise this series with an introductory essay by Jade Foster and correspondence between Lee and her community of friends and family around the world, letters that tackle the realities of motherhood, community, language/communication, independence/interdependence, and artmaking in this fraught geopolitical moment.
SHIPS FALL 2025
Bondage Baggage is the first major monograph on the work of artist Maia Ruth Lee and focuses on her ongoing body of work of the same name. Working across painting, sculpture, photography, and film, Lee has crafted a visual lexicon that takes on the complexities of the self in times of dissonance and globalization. Lee was born in Busan, South Korea, grew up in Kathmandu and Seoul, spent over a decade in New York City, and has lived in recent years in Salida, Colorado.
Migration lies at the core of Lee’s experience and comes to form in works that often evoke maps, atlases, and banners with an underlying interest in language, translation, symbols, and signs. In Bondage Baggage, the body is also referenced, as the bound baggage and textile works metaphorically visualize the accumulations and contours of a life. This volume weaves images of the sculpture, paintings, prints, and installation works that comprise this series with an introductory essay by Jade Foster and correspondence between Lee and her community of friends and family around the world, letters that tackle the realities of motherhood, community, language/communication, independence/interdependence, and artmaking in this fraught geopolitical moment.
SHIPS FALL 2025
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Artwork by Maia Ruth Lee
Text by Jade FosterCorrespondence from Amanny Ahmad, Brook Hsu, Christine Sun Kim, Jimin Seo, and Martine Syms
Hardcover with belly band
9 x 11.5 inches
212 pages / 132 imagesTrade ISBN: 9798890181220
Signed ISBN: 9798890181237 -
Maia Ruth Lee (b. 1983 in Busan, South Korea) lives and works in San Francisco. Recent solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2024, 2022); Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2024); Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2023); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2021). Lee participated in numerous group exhibitions at venues including Prospect.6, New Orleans (2024); Center for Visual Arts, Denver (2023); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2022); Whitney Biennial, New York (2019); and Studio Museum 127, New York (2019). She is represented by Tina Kim Gallery in New York and François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles.