Artists

Lêna Bùi

Press release

Galerie Urs Meile is pleased to present its first solo exhibition with Vietnamese artist Lêna Bùi  (b. 1985). skin in my stomach introduces Bùi’s latest body of work, comprising a series of silk paintings, a handwoven carpet, and a video piece that coalesce into a murmuring, tactile, and visceral experience. Oscillating between concrete imagery and abstract painterly gestures, the works move beyond realist depictions of the body, exploring it instead as a vessel of both energy and time. Across varying media, the body manifests in both anatomical shapes and microscopic-like circulations, while time transcends layers of images, sound, and the viewer's movement through the space.

 This exploration of the body's internal processes perhaps has informed the exhibition's title. The artist finds grounding in ecologist David Abram's concept of the body as "the locus of change”, for she believes that it is “the direct and only way to experience the world and a place to form or break connections". Inspired by non-Western medicinal traditions, the stomach becomes a potent symbol - the seat of nurturing, intuition, and communication, acting as a nexus that bridges us with the external world. skin in my stomach invites us to embrace the intelligence residing within, where the boundaries between self and the world blur.