ARTIST STATEMENT

Lee Yip (b. 1982, ENGLAND)

is a mixed-race, interdisciplinary artist whose practice moves between lens-based work, lyricism, painting, and sculpture. His work examines how trauma, race, and class shape identity and perception. 

Born in Cambridge to an English mother and a Hong Kong Chinese father, Yip’s early life was defined by the absence of his paternal heritage, a void he filled through the visual and sonic subcultures of UK rave, hip hop, and Asian arthouse cinema. These were not just hobbies, but essential tools for navigating an early life marked by alienation.

A pivotal move to Guangzhou in 2015 intensified these questions of displacement. Upon returning to England and receiving a diagnosis of CPTSD, Yip recognised his photography from that period as an unintentional map of his internal landscape.

In his series After Dark, Yip draws from his personal experience with CPTSD, offering a visual meditation on the early stages of healing. Created during solitary midnight walks through Seoul and Tokyo, the series traces the intimate and often chaotic process of reconnecting with oneself and the world.

Yip seeks out and photographs flowers as living metaphors for emotion. He approaches them meditatively, using direct flash to draw them out from the darkness, their fragile forms suspended between visibility and disappearance. At times, they appear sharp and luminous, almost confrontational; at others, they blur, fade, or dissolve entirely.

Through this process, Yip explores how emotions shift and reshape themselves, how clarity can suddenly collapse into confusion, and how both are part of the same movement toward healing.

Yip currently lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.