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 spaces retain traces of presence, light, and time. The artist is interested in atmospheres shaped through the accumulation of movement, memory, and sensation, and in how paint can hold moments that remain unresolved or difficult to name. Rather than depicting fixed narratives, Lee approaches painting as a space where images gradually emerge, dissolve, and coexist.
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
