Susan Lee-Chun: Everybody Suz-ercise!

Part of the larger project Everybody Suz-ercise! this humorous and engaging body of work by artist Susan Lee-Chun (b. 1976, Seoul) transforms an art gallery into a gym space. It includes a video art series, photographs from her performances, and an uncanny installation. Together, this presentation of Lee-Chun’s work explores exercise culture, gender norms, and the racialized beauty industry.

Suzercise (mirrored symmetry, composition #1) doubles benches, weights, and other gym equipment in a carefully symmetrical arrangement, creating an uncanny, almost stage-like setting that feels both real and familiar, artificial and strange. The mirrored layout suggests reflection, evoking the ways in which cultural identities are replicated and reflected back to us as branded alter egos. Her video series, Let’s Suz-ercise Chicago-style!, documents a performance from 2009 inspired by aerobic exercise VHS tapes.

Lee-Chun is known for adopting a series of alter egos—Sue, Sioux, and Su—that embody shifting cultural and social personas, from mainstream assimilation to perceived “otherness.” Through these characters, she playfully unsettles expectations about authenticity and belonging, using humor and commercial aesthetics to draw viewers in through familiarity, only to subvert those expectations. By turning an everyday site of training into a space of critical reflection, Lee Chun exposes how beauty, fitness, and cultural symbols are packaged for consumption—inviting viewers to question where the line between perception and reality, artifice and authenticity, truly lies.

Based in Miami, Florida, Susan Lee-Chun has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Her work, while humorous and playful, challenges culture, stereotype and representation.

Free parking is available at MDC's Padrón Campus flat parking lot located at 2501 SW 6TH Street, Miami, FL 33135.

MOAD's programs are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor, and Board of County Commissioners. They are sponsored in part by the State of Florida through the Division of Arts and Culture, and with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Image Credit: Susan Lee-Chun, Video still from Let’s Suz-ercise Chicago-style!, Edition 2/3, 2009. Single-channel video, Gift of Cota Cohen-Knobloch. Collection of Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College. Image courtesy of the artist.