Mia Lee
Mia Lee is an American artist who works primarily in painting and textile design. Her artwork is cartoonish with themes of the African diaspora from her own experiences. She has had several high-profile clothes design collaborations.
Background
Lee was born in 1992 in Chicago, Illinois, United States, where she was raised. Her family is from the Caribbean island of Roatán, off the coast of Honduras, and she is regarded as a native of Chatham, the Chicago neighborhood in which she was raised. She has lived in New York City and Los Angeles, before returning to Chicago. Her grandparents moved from Roatán to Chicago's South Side in the 1960s. Lee's work arises from her maternal influences. Her mother was a painter. One grandmother was also a painter, while the other was a seamstress. Lee has studied piano under her grandmother's tutelage. She studied costume design at University of Illinois. Her first doll fashions were made by sewing scraps from her seamstress grandmother.She has become a figurative artist and a designer. Her contemporary art presents cartoonish figures in expressions of her lived experiences and emotional states. Lee views her art and designs as work created from the perspective of a Caribbean Black woman who was raised on the South Side of Chicago. Her work repeatedly uses three characters – The Gentleman, The Lady, and The Demon – and she uses the color black for skin tone.
Work
Lee's COVID-19 pandemic-induced foray into social media facilitated her first artwork sale of Gentleman in Green in 2021. She collaborated with Chance The Rapper at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles for "Yah Know" which was a promotional single for his Star Line album. Her art became the cover art for the single, and she was in the song's music video. The artwork, which portrays a black couple with a burning house as a backdrop, is regarded as an updated version of American Gothic from the perspective of the African diaspora. Her collaboration that began at the MOCA, culminated in a trip with Chance and Vic Mensa to Mensa's fatherland, Ghana.She has designed clothing collections for Urban Outfitters, Nordstrom and Nike. Her fashion collection for Urban Outfitters was considered to be genderless. In an interview, she stated that she saw Chad Ochocinco wearing one of her jacket designs during an interview with Shannon Sharpe. She has been inspired by creative artists of various ages such as Jimi Hendrix, Prince and Zoë Kravitz. George Condo and Jean-Michel Basquiat are artistic influences who are known for work that is similarly cartoonish. Takashi Murakami is also an inspiration.