Mirena Rhee

Mirena Rhee is a multiplanetary artist. She works in drawing, painting, animation, 3d art, installation, and performance. Mirena lives and works in New York City.

Before moving to New York City Mirena worked in Silicon Valley as a senior and lead video game artist for blockbuster franchises like Star Wars for Lucasfilm. This type of commercial work involves working in a three-dimensional space on the computer and her work carries over that three-dimensional play and often includes 3d geometric bodies and Star Wars allusions like the Darth Vader helmet.

Mirena often uses hands as building blocks for her drawings, animations, installations, and performance. Her own hands serve as the models because of their accessibility - being constantly present and available.

In drawing Mirena uses dip pen and ink, an archaic technique of drawing dating back to the reed pens of 400 BC. The drawings often expand into installations and animations. Sometimes she remixes hands-on work into digital animations, videos, and 3d installations.

Mirena’s installations are ephemeral structures created in public spaces, designed to be easily deployed and transported, with minimal carbon footprint and disruption to the environment. Mirena strives to work responsibly and with respect for the public, the public spaces, and the organizations that maintain them.

Mirena Rhee’s performances are created in public spaces in New York City where she works spontaneously with the general public to create collaborative works of art. In these performances, she uses wearable canvases that she asks the general public to paint and which turn into three-dimensional crusts covered in graffiti. Writings, pictograms, and drawings by people from all walks of life, ages, races, and countries, just like New York City, reflect spontaneously on the sidewalk on their human condition.

Mirena is fascinated by and learns from the works of Antiquity and the Old Masters. She draws inspiration from the city of New York and its people, her past work on Star Wars, and the computer. Major influences in her life are artists Marina Abramovich, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Yayoi Kusama, as well as the painter Salvador Dali.




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