A Breath Held: Kiju Lee’s “Suffocating Penalty, Suffocating Reality” Stuns at SCA Symposium

By Kwangho Jeong ‘26 & Minsung Kim ‘26  • Nov 28, 2024

Kiju Lee’s “Suffocating Penalty, Suffocating Reality”: the gallery presentation and the piece situated outdoors

Kiju Lee’s mixed-media piece, “Suffocating Penalty, Suffocating Reality,” arrived like a warning flare in the quiet of the gallery, glowing in shades of toxic green and industrial purple. And it demanded to be noticed.

The centerpiece of Lee’s composition is a stark, detailed gas mask, rendered with such precision that the filters feel almost heavy on the page. But the real story lives inside the mask’s reflective lenses: a distorted, almost ghostly scene of people standing on a field, their silhouettes warped by the lens as if viewed from the edge of catastrophe. The figures appear calm, oblivious to the toxic world closing in around them.

This tension between the familiar and the apocalyptic is the pulse of Lee’s work.

It raises a simple but unsettling question: What are we breathing in without even noticing?

The title itself reads like a chant—“Suffocating Penalty, Suffocating Reality.”It isn’t subtle, but it isn’t meant to be. Lee’s message is distilled, and delivered with the urgency of an alarm. Even though the reality is one we all share, the penalty is societal and personal.

During the symposium, students lingered in front of the piece longer than expected. The glowing green highlights almost hummed under the gallery lights, and the cracked, metallic background evoked a world collapsing under its own weight. SCA’s art faculty praised the work for its cinematic composition, its provocative layering, and its ability to capture complex emotion through a single, unforgettably intense image.

Kiju Lee may be young, but this piece shows the work of an artist already fluent in visual storytelling—someone who understands that good art doesn’t whisper. It tightens your chest to forcefully inhale, and makes you wonder what exactly you’re breathing.

At the symposium, Lee’s piece did all of that—and then stayed with viewers long after they walked away.