Ecological & Food-Based Materials

Jay Lee investigates how staple grains — rice, corn, wheat — store and transmit cultural memory across geographies. 'Memories of Corn' (KOIK Contemporary, December 2025) was a ritual dining experience where Korean-Mexican grain narratives were explored through participatory dining and collaborative bioplastic sculpture making. Three chefs — Miguel Wheelock (Saltillo), Dominique Van der Linden (Berlin–Mexico), and Sara Medina (Monterrey) — created dishes that traced corn's journey across cultures, while guests wrote memories on corn husks and made bioplastic sculptures from cornstarch. At Salon ACME no.13 (2026), the installation 'Memories of Corn and Rice' presented naturally dyed corn husks and rice grains hand-sewn on linen alongside cast glass sculptures containing corn and rice — a material archive of two grains that feed half the world's population. Through The Gramounce altMA program (2025–2027), this research extends to natural sourdough fermentation in Seoul and heritage grain cultivation in Portugal's Serra da Estrela, tracing how grain knowledge survives through recipes, women's labor, and fermentation practices. Additional training at ZHdK Ecological Practice (Zurich, 2025) and The Canopy Program (NYC, 2025) deepens the ecological framework.