Haevan Lee's Psychedelic Canvases Hide the Scars of War

Haevan Lee paints landscapes of swirling pinks, soft yellows and turquoise waves — and every one of them carries references to bunkers, warning signs and military barriers. The South Korean-born, Netherlands-based artist builds her enormous canvases around a contradiction: the closer you look, the less dreamlike they become.

Lee was born near the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea. That origin shaped a career-long fascination with places people are forbidden to enter. Her artistic research now takes her to border regions and landscapes shaped by military activity, where she studies the tension between natural beauty and human-made divisions.

What hides inside the 'Battleground' series?

The answer sits in the details. In Lee's Battleground series, colorful abstract forms conceal references to bunkers, warning signs, military barriers and other reminders of conflict. What might initially resemble a fantastical garden gradually reveals itself as a landscape carrying the invisible scars of history, as Design You Trust's report on the work puts it.

The scale matters as much as the palette. Lee's canvases sometimes seem too large for the walls surrounding them, and her compositions frequently extend beyond the canvas entirely. In her installations, exhibition spaces become immersive environments filled with overlapping colors and unexpected shapes.

The artist works between two countries, South Korea and the Netherlands. Her practice combines four strands:

• traditional painting
• large-scale installations
• video
• historical research

In short, the paintings are only one part of a wider research project into borders, war and humanity's relationship with nature.

Where has the work been shown?

Lee's exhibition record spans both of her home countries. Her work has appeared at:

• Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul
• Bradwolff Projects, Amsterdam
• Museum Arnhem, the Netherlands

The venues matter. A museum program spanning the Korean capital and two Dutch cities maps precisely onto the artist's biography and her subject matter: the political border she was born beside, examined from a European vantage point.

The paintings themselves operate on two levels at once. On the surface, they celebrate the extraordinary beauty of nature. Underneath, they quietly question the boundaries humans insist on drawing across it — a contradiction Design You Trust calls fascinating, and one that gives the cheerful palette its critical weight.

That duality is the point. As Lee continues to research militarized border regions and stretch her compositions past the canvas edge, her work suggests that the most seductive colors in contemporary painting may be carrying its heaviest history.