Josephine Lee


Lee is a first-generation immigrant whose work is largely informed by a lifetime of movement across Canada and the United States. Lee’s interdisciplinary practice explores the psychic violence of cultural assimilation and nationalism. Her performances, installations, and sculptures shift between an intersectional analysis of this violence at the scale of a nation (where nuclear tests, land-seizures, and xenophobia exacerbate one another) and of the home (where the burdens of identity and generational trauma can be foundational and inescapable). Lee holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in science and fine arts. She has exhibited throughout Canada and the United States, as well as performed at documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany. Recently, Lee was awarded the Oscar Kolin Fellowship, the Vera G. List Sculpture Award, and a Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist Award at the BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity. Lee currently resides within the stolen territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Artists in Residence

First Nations land acknowledegement

UBC VPRI acknowledges that the UBC Point Grey campus is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm.


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