About

Mirena Rhee is a multiplanetary artist living and working in New York City. Rhee's artistic journey has taken her from her early days as a 3D artist for Star Wars at Lucasfilm to her current focus on multiplanetary drawings and paintings. These works are inspired by the images, sounds, and discoveries of NASA's exploration missions and SpaceX’s endeavor to make life multiplanetary.

Mirena crafts paintings with natural resins and pigments using old masters' techniques of layering and glazing. The drawings are made with dip pen and ink, and ink washes on cotton rag.

The main themes in her work encompass a diverse range of subjects and mediums.

Hands: Rhee is fascinated with the hands as the main builder of human civilization, the oldest art being handprints on the walls of caves. 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.

3D Bodies: Drawing on her background as a 3D artist, Rhee incorporates three-dimensional elements into her work like the platonic solids. The platonic solids are a symbol of the Renaissance, scientific precision, and the Renaissance idea for the ideal man.

Performance and Collaboration: Mirena Rhee's performance art is a collaboration with the general public, where the audience becomes the artist. During these performances, she invites people to create graffiti on primed canvas, resulting in artwork that reflects the collective frame of mind of the participants.

Installation: Rhee's art installations created in public spaces are designed with mobility in mind, allowing them to be easily transported and installed. They can be packed into a bag and installed in any public space, albeit temporarily and without the need for permits or official authorization, bypassing the traditional art establishment and engaging directly with the public.

Dip Pen and Ink Drawings: Rhee's dip pen and ink drawings are made on hot press board, a very smooth cotton paper using an archaic technique dating back to the reed pens of the 4th century BC. They have a unique three-dimensional surface reminiscent of etchings which draws the viewer in and invites closer inspection.

Mirena also draws inspiration from the works of the Old Masters, the city of New York and its people, and her commercial work as a 3D and video game artist on Star Wars. Major influences in her life are artists Marina Abramovich, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, as well as the painter Salvador Dali.

Solo Shows

2017 McLanahan Gallery, Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts, PA

Juried Shows

2016 Art From the Boros IV, Denise Bibro Fine Art, New York, NY

2010 California Modern Gallery, Selections 2010, Curated by Ray Beldner, Alison Bing and Inga Fisher, San Francisco, CA

Invitations

2021 White Room, Chashama, New York, NY

2019 Giant Hands in East Village, Chashama, New York, NY

Installations

2022 Moon Hand, New York, NY

2022 Day’s Not Over Yet Augmented Reality, New York, NY

2022 Giant Hands Augmented Reality, New York, NY

2022 Glitch Augmented Reality, New York, NY

2021 Rainbow Bridge, New York, NY

2021 Strawberry Fields Flower Forever, New York, NY

2021 Strawberry Fields Once Again, New York, NY

2021 Forest Path, New York, NY

2021 Reflections, New York, NY

2021 Remember Summer, New York, NY

2020 Summer Playfield, New York, NY

2020 Strawberry Fields Forever, New York, NY

2020 Giant Hands Over the Bridge, New York, NY

2020 One New York, Times Square, New York, NY

2019 Hands Tesseract, New York, NY

2018 Giant Hands on Broadway, New York, NY

2018 Giant Hands in Central Park, New York, NY

2018 Giant Hands in Beacon, Beacon, NY

2016 Ingredients of a Subway Car, New York, NY

Performance/Collaborative

2020 Memory Replacement Election Day, New York, NY

2020 Hands Icosahedron, The Armory Show, New York, NY

2018 Memory Replacement World Trade Center, New York, N

2018 Memory Replacement, The Armory Show, New York, NY

2017 Tangled, New York, NY

2017 Ingredients of a Subway Car, New York, NY

2016 Memory Replacement Election Day, New York, NY

2016 Today London - The Flip Side, London, UK

2012 Dumbo Arts Festival, Brooklyn, NY

2012 Figment, Governors Island, NYC

2012 Shodo, New York, NY

2012 Xquiste Corpse Act Three, Armory Arts Week, New York, NY

2012 Xquiste Corpse Act Two, Armory Arts Week, New York, NY

2012 Xquiste Corpse Act One, Armory Arts Week, New York, NY

Video Games

2000-2014 Video Game Artist at Lucasfilm, Activision, SEGA, Z-Axis, Gameloft, Firebrand Games for Star Wars, X-Men, Iron Man, Shrek, Aggressive Inline, Ice Age, Hot Wheels.

Education

College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, Cincinnati, OH, MSc Candidate in History and Theory of Architecture. Awarded Full Scholarship and Research Assistantship.

The University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy, Sofia, Bulgaria, MA in Architecture. Awarded Full Scholarship.