b. 1974 Stockton, CA
2000, BFA School of Visual Arts, NY
2002, MFA Columbia University, NY
2004, MPS New York University, NY
Lives and works in New York City and Tahiti, French Polynesia

Alexander Lee was born in Stockton, California, and grew up in Venus Point in Mahina, Tahiti. Lee draws on his rich cultural heritage to examine individual and collective narratives in a multimedia practice that includes drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and performance. A storyteller, Lee amalgamates personal memory, popular culture and history into a rich symbolic visual language.
Lee’ s trilogy, THE DEPARTURE OF THE FISH, titled after the creation myth of the island of Tahiti, premiered at Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles in 2006 and at Clementine Gallery, New York in 2007. His subsequent projects, RECITATIONS FROM THE GREAT FISH CHANGING SKIES (2008), and EXPANDING-EEL-DEVOURER (2009) continue his interest in storytelling and the anthropic process. THE TUPAPAU WITHIN (TE TUPAPAU MANAVA) followed, a stage piece about the inner beasts at play in the creative process, was conceived with Composer Keith Moore and workshopped at Newman Popiashvili Gallery between Dec 2010-Jan 2011 with the contribution of Gabriel Romero, Juliana Snaper, and the PRISM Quartet. In 2011, in DRAWING FOR UHURU, the artist trekked the 5895 meters up to Uhuru peak, Kilimanjaro, and unfurled a drawing of the Tahitian flag he made during his ascension. From 2012 to 2016, he was Guest Artist Lecturer at the Centre des Métiers d’Arts de Polynésie Française, where he spearheaded MANAVA, a workshop and exhibition project which aimed at revisiting the ethnographic collection of the Musée de Tahiti through contemporary works. In 2014, Lee’s THE BOTANIST, a visual retelling of the legend of the breadfruit through early English botanical endeavours in the Pacific, premiered at Collectors Contemporary, Singapore.
The Botanist explores cultural and ecological transformation through botanical motifs, the exhibition is an important new stop for Lee; it extends the trajectory of his practice and crucially connects the work to his Asian heritage. The Botanist premiered at Collectors Contemporary in 2014 and brought the work of Alexander Lee to Singapore for the first time.
Subsequent projects, THE BOTANICAL FACTORY I & II were respectively presented by Art Production Fund at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and part of the exhibition Made by...Feito por Brasileiros at Cidade Matarazzo, São Paulo. In 2016, he takes part of ‘ORAMA, the first exhibition of 'ORAMA Studio (a Tahiti based artists collective, of which he is a founding member), at the Musée de Tahiti et des Iles. In 2017, his work TE ATUA VAHINE MANA RA O PERE - L’Aube où les Fauves viennent se Désaltérer a multi-room installation collapsing the narratives or Pele and the many nuclear tests in the Pacific was part of the 1st Honolulu Biennale; a continuous wall painting covering 4500m2 of the MHKA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp titled Te fanau’a ‘una’una na te Tumu: THE SENTINELS, part of A Temporary Futures Institute; and ME’TIA - An Island Standing, the first in a new series of video works, part of Tidalectics at TBA21 / Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Wien which travelled to the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, Croatia. In 2018, he stages La Collection CANOPUS, during the Tahiti Fashion Week at the Territorial Assembly of French Polynesia: a performance as memorial for the 50th Anniversary of France's bomb H explosion Canopus, in the form of a fashion presentation with 9 outfits retracing the history of clothing in Polynesia since 1st contact. In 2018, NO'ANO'A, an installation at Marisa Newman Projects, NY, tackles colonial history in Polynesia through the specter of Paul Gauguin and the concept of painting in an irradiated and exotic landscape. In 2019, Nō taua tīruvi ra (A cause du Déluge - Because of the Flood) is executed on the largest wall of the CAC (Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania), part of the exhibition BLOOD and SOIL. The mural measures 5,5 x 42 meters and epically weaves, through visual puns, a history of modernism from the West, the East, and the primitive indigenous other it cannibalized in its process. For 2020 and 2021, Lee is at work on a series of new sculptures.