Yeji Sei Lee
Born 1995, Tokyo, Japan
Lives and works in Tokyo
Yeji Sei Lee completed her MFA in Painting at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts in 2024 and a BFA in Painting from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2020. Lee’s work explores how the presence of bodies in space, shaped by movement, breath, and repetition, generates a kind of atmospheric memory. The artist is interested 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, Yeji uses the materiality of paint to allow impressions to surface gradually—these may be scenes once glimpsed or forms that have not yet found their names. For Lee, painting is a way to make visible the quiet, often unspoken interactions that occur between people, place, and time.
Lee’s work has been recognised with the Oil Award at Jackson’s Art Prize (2026), the Judge’s Award at AATM (2024), the Encouragement Prize at KAMIYAMA ART 10th Exhibition (2024), the O-shi Commemorative Prize (2020), the Ueno Geiyu Prize (2019), and the A-TOM Art Prize (2018). Her work is held in the Ryutaro Takahashi Collection, the Contemporary Art Foundation (Japan), and in the collection of Takashi Murakami.
EDUCATION
2024 MFA Painting, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan
2022 Exchange placement, Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, Munich, Germany
2020 BFA Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2025 ‘Under the Light We Age－Whatever Returns from Oblivion Returns to Find a Voice,’ Mitsukoshi Contemporary Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (Solo)
2025 ‘Where She Was, Not She,’ THE LOOP GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan (Solo)
2025 ‘What a Painting Wants,’ THE LOOP GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan (Group)
2024 ‘In Vibrant Hues, Their Voices Laid,’ Everyday Mooonday Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (Solo)
2024 ‘Rai-Zen-Dā,’ Kunsthalle Trier, Trier, Germany (Group)
2024 ‘Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi 2024,’ Gyoko-dori Underground Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (Group)
2023 ‘Call Me by My Name,’ THE LOOP GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan (Solo)
2022 ‘Zwischen Gestern und Morgen,’ Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany (Group)
2022 ‘KUMA Exhibition 2022,’ ANB Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan (Group)
2021 ‘Geographica,’ Courtyard HIROO, Tokyo, Japan (Solo)
2019 ‘singing gene,’ Ueno Geiyu Prize Winner Show, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan (Group)