Larry Lee is a multimedia artist, independent curator, and writer who earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he teaches in the Art History, Theory and Criticism; Contemporary Practices, and Academic Spine departments. He is also adjunct faculty at Columbia College Chicago and DePaul University.
His practice includes sculpture, video, installation and painting that “remakes” his personal history in specific and the Asian American experience in general into stylized multimedia objects and images he facetiously terms “orientalia”. His work has been exhibited in Chicago at the Chicago Cultural Center, Gallery 400 and Evanston Arts Center as well as New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, Cleveland, New Haven and Glasgow, Scotland. In addition to his curatorial project, Molar Productions, Lee collaborates with the painter Jason Dunda to perform as "The International Chefs of Mystery!" in a long-running video series available on Vimeo. Pre-COVID, the artist along with Susannah Papish co-founded boundary, an alternative project space in Beverly on the outskirts of southwest Chicago.
Over the years, he has worked with and been a part of many local Asian American arts organizations including DestinAsian, the Asian American Arts Collective, the Center for Asian Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago, and the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media. He has reviewed exhibitions in the Midwest for ArtsAsiaPacific magazine and is currently a reviews editor for the Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas journal.
In the spring of 2022, he launched the Spotlight Series at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago to
showcase work by local, emerging, and mid-career artists of Chinese descent and celebrate the divergent
artistic visions and experiences of being Chinese in America that reflects upon our relationship to
contemporary visual culture to a wider audience within the community.