Lee Mingwei 李明維

Biography

Born in Taiwan in 1964 and currently living in Paris and New York City, Lee Mingwei (李明維, 李明维) creates participatory installations, in which visitors can experience moments of generosity and connection through thoughtful moments – from visible mending of beloved clothing to shared meals and gifts of song. Lee’s projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, taking on different forms and change over the course of an exhibition.

Lee received an Master of Fine Arts from Yale University in 1997, and has held solo exhibitions internationally including at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1998), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (2000, 2012), The Museum of Modern Art (2003), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2004), Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (2008), Brooklyn Museum (2011), Mori Art Museum (2014), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015), Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2015), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015, 2020), National Gallery of Victoria (2016), Centre Pompidou (2017, 2018), Gropius Bau (2020) and Museum Villa Stuck (2021), and has been featured in biennials in Venice, Lyon, Liverpool, Taipei, Shanghai, Sydney, Sharjah, Whitney, and in the Asia Pacific Triennials in Brisbane.

In 2020 Lee was one of the artists commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales to create work for the Sydney Modern Project, the transformation of the institution into a two-building art museum campus. He has worked with architects SANAA to incorporate his artwork, Spirit House, into the external rammed-earth wall of the new building.