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.

Mia Lee is a contemporary painter and textile designer from Chicago, now based in New York. Her work focuses on cartoonish figurative paintings that depict familiar human experiences, emotional states, and the complexities of relationships. Balancing brightness with heavier themes, her work remains both accessible and psychologically resonant.

Deeply influenced by the women in her family, Mia’s multidisciplinary approach extends into textile design, where patterns from her paintings are translated into wearable forms. In 2022, she collaborated with Chance the Rapper on YAH Know, exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and was selected for Jordan Brand’s Artist Series. She has also partnered with Urban Outfitters on a genderless apparel collection.

Mia has exhibited with galleries including Kavi Gupta and was recently included in The Perpetual Feast at VSG Gallery (Chicago). Her work continues to explore visibility, representation, and the emotional landscape of contemporary life, with a focus on making Black girls feel seen within both cultural and institutional spaces.