YEJI SEI LEE
b. 1995, JapanYeji Sei LEE was born in 1995 in Tokyo, and currently lives and works in Tokyo. She graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts, where she received her BFA in 2020 and MFA in Painting in 2024. From 2021 to 2022, she also studied Painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München in Germany, receiving a Dipl. in Fine Arts. As an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan, LEE’s practice often revolves around identity, memory, place, and embodied experience, with an interest in how spaces retain subtle traces of collective life: the weight of time, the texture of air, and the residue of light. Rather than capturing fixed images or specific narratives, the artist uses the materiality of paint to generate a kind of atmospheric memory. In her work, painting is a way to make visible the quiet, often unspoken interactions that occur between people, place, and time.
Her recent solo exhibitions: “The Air After”, 2026, LINSEED, Shanghai; “Under the Light We Age”, 2025, THE LOOP GALLERY, Tokyo; “In vibrant hues, their voices laid”, 2024, Everyday Mooonday Gallery, Seoul; “Call me by my name”, 2023, ZONAMACO, Tokyo; “Geographica”, 2021, Courtyard HIROO, Tokyo; “STAR GAZER”, 2018, Bakurocho FACTORY, Tokyo. Her select group exhibitions include: “What a Painting Wants”, 2025, THE LOOP GALLERY, Tokyo; “Rai-Zen-Dā”, Kunsthalle Trier, Trier, Germany; Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi, 2024, Gyoko-dori Underground Gallery, Tokyo; “Zwischen Gestern und Morgen”, 2022, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany; KUMA Exhibiton, 2022, ANB Tokyo, Tokyo; “CAPTURE”, 2021, Rikka Gallery, Tokyo; “singing gene”, 2019, Ueno Geiyu Prize Winner Show, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo; “Knock-Knock”, 2019, s+arts Gallery, Tokyo; “NI/O”, 2019, 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo; “MAY NOT BE CITY”, 2018, A-TOM Art Prize Winner Show, Courtyard HIROO, Tokyo.
Text courtesy LINSEED Projects.
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