Hana's Ride

Hana's Ride is the master set of 327 drypoint prints assembled into a stop-motion animation, with 'Hana'—a name common in Korean and Japanese—suggesting a child or young woman's journey. At more than three hundred frames, the project represents months of plate preparation, inking, and pressing for what becomes seconds of moving image when sequenced. Drypoint suits this method because the burr's softness translates well to the slight registration shifts inherent in animating from individual prints; the process also embeds a record of its own labor in every frame. The work belongs to the central strand of Lee's practice—the print-as-animation hybrid she has refined since the late 2000s—and uses transit as its narrative spine, consistent with her interest in everyday urban movement. Compared with the earlier Walk 2010 (198 prints) and Family Portrait (157 prints), Hana's Ride doubles the frame count and points toward the longer, more elaborate narrative animations that follow in her career.