How Joyce Lee’s Erotic Surrealism Explores The Nude In Art

“I’ve always loved drawing the human body. I especially liked painting women’s faces and bodies, particularly with a mysterious mood” Joyce Lee says of her first steps into painting and portraiture as a teenager growing up in Seoul, Korea – “One day for fun, I tried combining a human hand and foot with a woman’s breasts and man’s genitals and the visual effect of this weird creature was surprisingly intense. People seemed to love it, and this was the moment I discovered my talent for erotic imagery.”

Creating erotic imagery that redefines the artistic trope has become Lee’s speciality. For the last ten years she’s been creating an alternative erotic art aesthetic that borrows from both renaissance and pop art. “I practiced a lot to create more realistic depictions of the human face and body,” she says – “After that, I began adding more stories to my artwork”. These studies have culminated in the book Baron (out 31 January), a collection of Lee’s erotic artwork that ranges from subverted images of peaches, to reimaginings of Adam and Eve.

Lee is aware that often women who create nude imagery are dismissed and that people fail to understand the meaning of her art. These misconceptions have offended her in the past and led to abusive messages on Instagram, a place that over the last decade has been a battleground for female artists — with many who post imagery of their nude artwork having it taken down . The announcement last week that Instagram and Facebook would lift the ban on images featuring womens’ nipples could make the platforms a more viable place for women artists, but Lee still predicts the same type of abuse she’s received throughout the years. “Sometimes people send me a DM or emails asking me to draw something about a sexual scene of woman and a woman, or a man and a man, for example. Sometimes they will even send me some of their own photos over DM for reference, but depicting sexual scenes in a direct way is not what I do.”

Lee sees her role as one that explores unspoken sexual codes with a strict aversion to creating click-bait nude art: “A lot of my works express human emotion. Various looks on the faces, or gestures of hands inside my art show human feelings like excitement, delights, depression and so on. I have no interest in depicting the human body just as it is, or illustrating sexual acts in a realistic fashion like other artists on social networks do.”

She understands the misinterpretation comes with the role of being an artist, but it still grates. “People often misunderstand and misconstrue my lifestyle, extrapolating and inferring quite a great number of imagined things about my life from my work. My life is not about that at all, and what is truly private in my mind remains private and exclusive for myself only.” Lee wants people to finish reading Baron and understand that she has broad artistic range, and that she is “not just an erotic artist. I want people to be curious and question what they see when they look into my paintings.” Ahead of the the launch of Baron, here she explores the meaning behind five of the works featured in the book.

Prayer 13

The Prayer series is probably the most popular of my work. Many people loved the nun in this series, who is different from a typical nun figure. But actually I received countless complaints and even curse words saying I disgraced Christianity, which I don’t agree with, even though I am also a Christian. The nun in my works will look different in appearance but she is a very religious person fundamentally. I wanted to focus on the title, “prayer” itself which depicts her sincerity for God. But you can still see some piercing holes on her face, around eyebrow and nose.

Jelly Dream

Jelly Dream can be interpreted as a woman’s private fantasy which represents her fantasy for the soft and wet things which are very sexual. And the gummy bears play the role to make her lusty desire look soft and even innocent — like a teddy bear with a sexy woman in many photography series by men.

Keep Calm and Get Ready to Pray

A nun is regarded as a very religious person, which is very true. But I think she still has passion and desire as any ordinary woman does inside, which is very natural and there is nothing wrong with it. She’s about to pray out loud and keep her dry lips moisturized before that. And the color of the lip balm is “cherry”, which will make her look better.

Genesis 4

Adam and Eve were very innocent creatures before they ate the forbidden fruit. This painting is describing the scene just before they committed the original sin. They are innocent, yet still have potential desire hidden inside, and the paper cup phone-game is a witty way of depicting the sexual communication between them, which is indirect.

Choice 2

This piece does not have serious meaning but is visual fun, playing with the similarity between peaches and a woman’s booty. In many cases of creating my art, I don’t put serious meaning or ideas into my art. But sometimes people send me messages or leave comments like, “what is the hidden meaning?”, which I think is very interesting. After hearing people talking about it, I also began to see more.

Cooperate with yourself

I love the people around me, respect them and try to listen to their advice as much as I can. But I always realize that I needed to listen to my inner voice in critical moments. It is ourselves who we need to keep conversing with, cooperate with and even compromise with.

Baron is available for sale from 31 January.