Keo Keo Ro ("in layers"), 2023-2025 examines the regeneration and urban transformation of London, a city that embodies a complex narrative of change and contradiction. I question the ideas of access, authority, utopian aspiration, and ownership. My practice employs processes of appropriation, repetition, physical layering, and deconstruction, utilising materials commonly used in photography and architecture.

Photography serves in different ways as tool for documenting the built environment and eventually to interrogate how space is shaped, inhabited, remembered, and ultimately reimagined. Some photographers when turn their gaze toward cities, they do more than capture façades or skylines—they reveal the social, political, and historical forces embedded within architecture (…) In Keo Keo Ro, Taejay Lee approaches London not merely as a physical territory but as a palimpsest of ideologies and histories. Through processes of layering, décollage, and reconstruction, Lee translates the city’s cycles of demolition and redevelopment into a visual language of fragmentation and repair. The materiality of his process—blueprints, transparency film, grid paper—evokes the shared foundations of photography and architecture, positioning his work at the intersection of image-making and spatial planning. By juxtaposing personal photographs with archival materials and commercial imagery, Lee questions who has the authority to design, occupy, and profit from urban space. His images become tools for unearthing hidden narratives and for examining how the forces of capitalism and memory shape the contemporary city.

Looking To Question The Built Environment by Steve Bisson. Urbanauitica, 17. Dec. 2025

Interview at Didots Global Artistic Visionaries: https://didots.com/interviewteye

NOTE:

-Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition, 19 Sep 2025 - 25 Jan 2026, York Art Gallery, UK.

-Screened during NOW FILMING: Art, Documentary and Resistance in 1930s East London, 23 Jan - 22 Feb 2025, Four Corners Gallery London, UK.

-Screened during Living With Buildings VII, 2nd July, 2025, PVC Coventry, UK. 

-CREA 2025, Special Mention for the Quality of Research, Cantieri del Contemporaneo Venice, Italy.

-Aesthetica Art Prize, Long Listed, 2025, UK.

-Published by ArtDoc 2025 Issue nr. 1 Beyond the Frame.

-Winner, Global Artistic Visionaries, Didots Global Talent Showcase 2024, UK.

-Urbanautica Awards, Representations of Space, Architecture, and Conflicts Shortlisted Portfolio, 2024, Italy.