Mettāmorphosis
Una Lee

Mettāmorphosis  by Una Lee, sound installation for audio-guide

Mettā, meaning benevolence, good will, or simply love in Pali, is a concept drawn from Buddhism (one of the ‘four sublime states’). Morphosis, deriving from Ancient Greek, refers to ‘development in an organism or one of its parts through structural change’.

Embodying the meaning of this contemporary compound neologism in the title, the piece invites and guides the listener to potential, alternative ways to experiencing the museum: without expectation and judgement; in its pure form; take it for what it is or ‘may be’. Extending from this, we can possibly conceive of meeting the whole world with all its inhabitants a little differently: in a transformed way seen through love.

The work is available to be experienced via the audio-guide (with English and Polish language versions) of the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw during the festival Sonics & Scenics from 26 June to 21 September.

Written, composed and recorded by Una Lee
Featuring song ‘Caritas Habundat’ by Hildegard Von Bingen
Polish version voiced by Agnieszka Olek

Commissioned by The Wapping Project, co-commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, for the festival Sonics & Scenics, supported by the British Council through UK/Poland Season 2025.

Una Lee is an artist working with sounds, stories and sensations, in perpetual pursuit of alternative storytelling. She plays with the notion of a contemporary marriage between performance and poetry. She likes to explore human condition, memory, time, and our relationship with art and ecology through narratives. These are often drawn from her autobiographical events as a non-native in her current habitat, while she can be identified as Korean-Irish-British within her practice. She has performed and exhibited extensively including at Sonorities Festival, Belfast; International Summer Music Festival Darmstadt; Nowy Teatr, Warsaw; Espace Niemeyer, Paris; Osaka Electroacoustic Music Festival; Dotolim, Seoul; and apex art, New York. She is an Oram Award winner and Ivor Novello Composers Award nominee, and holds an MA and PhD from Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast.