Seulgi Lee: DAL DARI. The Moon and the Legs

As part of the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Korea, and at the invitation of the Guimet Museum, Korean artist Seulgi Lee has conceived "DAL DARI, The Moon and the Legs", a monumental installation extending between the museum’s exterior and interior spaces. The work is inspired by a Korean belief that crossing a bridge beneath the year’s first full moon strengthens the legs.

On the façade, "DAL, The Moon" adorns the museum with two monumental wooden semi-circles, designed in collaboration with architect Jean-Benoît Vétillard. Their structure evokes both the modernist grid and moonsal, traditional Korean lattice screens. Painted on one side only, these elements create a constantly shifting visual experience that changes according to the visitor’s viewpoint and movements.

In the belvedere rotunda on the museum’s fourth floor, 700 metres of ribbons in a variety of colours are suspended to form a flexible mesh, weighted with small bronze bells designed by the artist herself. Echoing an inverted pattern of the dome, "DARI, The Legs" also creates a distorted reflection of the latticework of the half-moons installed on the façade, at times disrupted by the random chiming of the bells.