The Presence of Solitude, the first UK solo presentation by Taiwanese artist Val Lee, unites film, photography and costume to consider isolation not as emptiness but as a charged, contemplative state. The works, featuring masked and unidentifiable figures, disjointed narratives and ambiguous landscapes, exist outside conventional time, prompting reflection on how personal and collective memory are shaped by political and social systems. In the HENI Project Space at the Hayward Gallery, audiences will encounter moments of quiet estrangement and unexpected intimacy, where absence itself becomes a medium for connection.
At the centre of the show are new iterations of Valley in the Minibus (2024) and The Sorrowful Football Team (2025). Valley in the Minibus engages with the idea of “non-places”, theorised by French anthropologist Marc Augé as transient spaces such as airports, motorways and shopping centres. A masked figure DJing alone in a video installation transforms anonymity into a quiet meditation on presence, while three full-body costumes from the original performance occupy the space like lingering echoes.
The Sorrowful Football Team depicts a blind football team playing in Northern Japan, using the sport as a metaphor for navigating trauma and political repression under Taiwan’s White Terror (1947–1987). Presented as a slide projection, the work juxtaposes discipline, vulnerability and collective endurance, suggesting that light can be found even in solitary darkness. Spectatorship becomes an act of engagement, negotiating trust and perception.
Val Lee (b. 1981) works across expanded cinema, performance and moving image. Trained in Filmmaking and Sociology at SUNY, Lee founded the collective Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel in 2008. Their practice often constructs nonlinear, disorienting environments that reframe space and spectatorship, addressing systemic violence, war and affective states. Lee has shown work at the 13th Gwangju Biennale, Grand Palais, HKW Berlin, MEP and MOCA Taipei, with performances at TFAM, Kyoto Art Center and Taiwan National Theater. Awards include the Taishin Arts Award and support from the Asian Cultural Council.
Lee’s work dwells in the tension between absence and presence. Masked figures, transitory landscapes and the slow choreography of blind footballers create liminal spaces that are neither fully private nor entirely public yet brimming with potential for intimacy. By foregrounding ambiguity, Lee asks viewers to consider the relational and temporal structures that shape their own experiences. The presentation aligns with the Hayward Gallery’s recent programme of experimental, internationally engaged practice. The HENI Project Space Series, which has previously showcased Huang Po-Chih, Heecheon Kim and Thabiso Sekgala, allows free access to emerging artists, reinforcing the gallery’s commitment to accessibility and global dialogue. Lee’s work complements this trajectory, showing how contemporary visual and live art can interrogate social, political and temporal frameworks while remaining viscerally compelling.
The themes resonate with artists such as Hito Steyerl, whose investigations of digital detachment and mediated presence probe surveillance and disconnection; Ragnar Kjartansson, whose durational performances examine endurance and affective bonds; and Wu Tsang, whose films and performances focus on marginalised communities navigating visibility and absence. Each, like Lee, navigates fragile spaces where spectatorship becomes a mode of participation. The Presence of Solitude transforms isolation into a reflective and relational experience. Lee reframes historical trauma and contemporary alienation, inviting audiences to inhabit moments of ambiguity that are politically charged yet quietly hopeful. Solitude emerges not as emptiness but as a terrain in which understanding, empathy and connection can develop.
This show reinforces Hayward Gallery’s role in nurturing international voices that challenge perception and engage deeply with human experience. Lee’s work, in its careful choreography of absence and presence, exemplifies this mission. The show gestures towards a world where reflection and attentiveness become acts of participation, reminding us that even in solitude there is potential for communion.
Val Lee: The Presence of Solitude is at Hayward Gallery London, 7 October 2025 – 11 January 2026: southbankcentre.co.uk
Words: Shirley Stevenson
All images: Val Lee, The Sorrowful Football Team (2025). Courtesy the artist.
