People of the Trial 2009
mixed media on mirrors with light installation, size variable

...In the "Shared.Divided.United" exhibition, Lee is showing a current piece of work which is concerned with the "East Berlin Affair" of 1967. During the then military dictatorship under Chung Hee Park, dozens of Korean students and emigres living in Eurpe were abducted to Korea and accused of spying for North Korea. Many of the kidnappings took place in West Berlin, with young artists and composers such as Eung Ro Lee and Yoon Yi Sang among the victims. Lee researched the names of the victims and presents their faces as portraits by means of mirrors negatives. Positive images are projected onto the wall via reflecting mirrors positioned on the ground. Lee thus takes up the mirror as a metaphorical language describing a reflection of the past into the present. The title "The people of the Trial", taken from a letter written by one of the kidnapped students to a German friend who had compared his predicament with K's trial in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, is a reference to the dire plight of an innocent person caught up in a dictatorial regime.(KKH)