Mire Lee’s solo exhibition 《Vomit My Blessing》 will be on view at Oude Kerk, a historic church and contemporary art institution in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from November 13, 2026, through March 7, 2027.
 
Oude Kerk commissions two major art projects each year, inviting artists to create works that engage with the building’s history. Following Kimsooja’s 《To Breathe – Mokum》 in 2025, the institution has invited Mire Lee to present a new installation in 2026.
 
The exhibition will incorporate elements from 《The Heart of My Machine is Golden Lead》, presented at Secession in Vienna, Austria, in summer 2026. Lee is reconfiguring these elements in response to Oude Kerk’s architecture and history.

The Distinctive Setting of Oude Kerk
 
Oude Kerk traces its origins to a wooden chapel built around 1250. Expanded over the following centuries, the building served both as a place of worship and as a burial site for the city’s inhabitants. Gravestones remain embedded in its floor, and Protestant services continue to take place on Sunday mornings.
 
This setting, where histories of worship and burial coexist, resonates with Lee’s exploration of bodily vulnerability and decay. The church’s architecture and gravestones provide a historical context for interpreting the movements of her machines in relation to life and death.

From Mechanical Movement to Bodily Sensation
 
A seven-metre-long concrete mixer will be installed inside Oude Kerk. Sections cut away from its steel body will expose an internal spiral structure, while a reddish-gold liquid will circulate through long plastic tubes connected to the rotating apparatus. The sounds of machinery and the smell of lubricants will also become part of the exhibition environment.
 
Visitors will encounter the apparatus through its form and movement, the flow of liquid, and the traces these processes leave behind. The exposed spiral structure resembles a ribcage, while the mechanism that moves liquid through the tubes evokes blood circulation or the activity of internal organs. Through the structure and movement of industrial equipment, Lee evokes the workings of a living body.
 
Sound and smell are integral to this experience. Visitors will enter an environment in which machinery operates and liquid flows. By engaging hearing and smell as well as sight, the installation will extend the experience of viewing sculpture into a physical encounter with the surrounding space.

Machinery and the Body Meet Architectural History
 
For 《Open Wound》 (2024) at Tate Modern, Lee installed rotating machinery, liquid, and fabric sculptures she calls “skins” in the Turbine Hall of the former power station. The process of soaking the fabrics in liquid, drying them, and suspending them from the ceiling evoked both a factory production line and processes of bodily formation.
 
At Secession in Vienna, 《The Heart of My Machine is Golden Lead》 (2026) made the exhibition space itself part of the work as material flowing from machinery left traces on the walls and floor. At Oude Kerk, elements of this installation will be reconfigured within a building that preserves histories of worship and burial.
 
Viewed together, the three exhibitions reveal how Lee develops her sculptural practice in response to the particular conditions of each site, expanding the ways audiences experience machinery and materials.
 
《Vomit My Blessing》 extends Lee’s investigation of the body into a place shaped by histories of life and death. By reconfiguring elements of the Vienna installation, the exhibition explores how sculpture acquires meaning through its relationship with a site, as well as through its materials and forms.
 
Lee’s work offers a physical encounter with Oude Kerk’s history, showing how contemporary art can make that history tangible through visitors’ sensory experience of the building.

About the Artist
 
Mire Lee (b. 1988, Seoul) works primarily in sculpture and installation. Combining motors, pumps, industrial materials, and flowing substances, she explores bodily vulnerability, desire, transformation, and decay. She participated in the International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2022 and presented solo exhibitions at the New Museum in New York (2023) and Secession in Vienna (2026). In 2024, she created the Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.
 
 
 
Exhibition Information
 
Exhibition: Mire Lee 《Vomit My Blessing》
Dates: November 13, 2026–March 7, 2027
Venue: Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Curator: Mariette Dölle, in collaboration with Vincent van Velsen
Website: Oude Kerk Official Exhibition Page