Visual narrative is central to Mia Lee’s practice, informed by her perspective as a Black woman of Caribbean descent raised on the South Side of Chicago. Her work draws from personal experience, often engaging with uncomfortable or emotionally charged moments and inviting viewers to inhabit those same states of feeling.

Through vivid color and stylized, cartoon-like figures, she constructs scenes that evoke nostalgia, solitude, femininity, desire, and the complexities of interpersonal relationships. Her characters, marked by ambiguous and expressive features, exist between familiarity and abstraction, allowing space for viewers to project their own interpretations and experiences.

Recurring figures such as the lady, the gentleman, and the demon function as fluid archetypes through which she examines vulnerability, identity, and emotional duality. In doing so, her work centers the raw, layered nature of Black life while fostering introspection and emotional resonance.