Lee’s practice is rooted in a respect for materials and the history they carry. For her works on paper, for example, Lee often makes the paper herself, pulping and panning a wide variety of fibres, from cotton and hemp to kozu. Lee is interested in how these fibres contain genealogical traces of their ancestors and how, accordingly, they can be used by the artist to explore her own ancestry. Born in Johannesburg, Lee’s mother and father hailed from Beijing andTaiwan, respectively, and the material cultures as well as spiritual philosophies have served as major inspirations. As means to grapple with her identity between these two tensioned states, her work had been in a flux of decolonial practices and the orient, practicing folk culture techniques to ease the agitation of diaspora within a post-apartheid society.

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Biography

Lee was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1998. She graduated from the Wits School of Art in 2020. Since then, she has participated in several group exhibitions, including duo show I hear you at BKhz Gallery (2023) and Oh So Quiet at Whatiftheworld (2023).

Her work has been featured at art fairs by Bubblegum Club Gallery (2022) and FORMS Art Gallery (2022). She has participated in residencies with the Leipzig International Art Programme (LIA) and has created commissioned work for BMW Group and Heineken.

 

In addition to fine art, Lee also works as a set and costume designer. Most recently, studying for an MFA in Scenography at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London. Lee designed a stage and costume for Shakespeare’s Hamlet directed by Marcos Barbosa, that will be touring in Portugal throughout 2025.  

Exhibitions

Vela Projects presents Mount Analogue, the gallery’s first group exhibition, featuring work by Nada Baraka, Cheryl Traub-Adler, Samuel Moscou, and Tzung Hui Lauren Lee.

The title is borrowed from Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing by René Daumal. The unfinished novel follows a group of explorer – philosophers who seek to discover Mount Analogue, a mythical mountain, a bridge between heaven and earth.

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