Connecting people through art 

The Han Nefkens Foundation is happy to extend an invitation to the opening of  Eunhee Lee’s exhibition “Clean Room, Reeling Room” at MoCA Taipei, on Friday, December 12th.

Clean Room, Reeling Room brings together cases of workers’ illness from different times, tracing trajectory between past and present. The exhibition features two films by Eunhee Lee, Body Alerts (2025) and Colorless, Odorless (2024), which reflect on two production environments: the reeling room and the clean room. The first refers to early industrial manufacturing, where substances like carbon disulfide were widely used in rubber and textile production, causing severe neurological and physical damage. The second points to contemporary electronics production, which is often celebrated as spaces of precision and cleanliness but still relies on toxic chemicals that quietly harm workers. Despite the decades between them, both reveal how industrial progress often comes at a human cost.

Colorless, Odorless (2024), is the result of Eunhee Lee winning the Han Nefkens Foundation – Loop Barcelona Video Art Production Grant 2023, in collaboration with Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; MoCA Museum, Taipei; ILHAM, Kuala Lumpur; Art Hub Copenhagen, and Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing.

The history of occupational disease caused by hazardous substances stretches back to the Industrial Revolution. Chemicals, radiation, heavy metals, poisonous gases, dangerous machinery, and repetitive labor have continually exposed workers’ bodies to risk. From coal miners’ black lung disease, the “Radium Girls” poisoned by glowing watch dials, and asbestosis, to Japan’s Itai-itai disease, Korea’s Wonjin Rayon disaster, chronic PFAS exposure cases, IBM’s toxic fume incidents in Silicon Valley and the illegal disposal of industrial waste at the RCA plant in Taiwan, these are all painful traces left behind in the name of innovation. The semiconductor industry, too, now stands on this long and toxic lineage.

What is hidden behind the sleek surfaces of our digital devices? What histories of harm, silence, and resistance do they carry? In tracing these connections, the exhibition highlights the repeated failures of industry to protect its workers, and the power of those affected, whose solidarity and struggle continue to push for change.

Eunhee Lee (b. 1990, South Korea) is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores the intersections of the individual, technology, and the image within social contexts. Based in Seoul, she has held solo exhibitions at Art Hub Copenhagen, Doosan Gallery, The Reference, and CR Collective. Her works have been included in group exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art; ARKO Art Center; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, among others.

Her films have been screened at the Jeonju International Film Festival, St. Moritz Art Film Festival, DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, EXiS Experimental Film and Video Festival, and more.