Yian Lee

Yian Lee (b. Taiwan) is a New York–based visual artist whose work explores the subconscious and the shifting idea of belonging. She studied fashion marketing at Parsons School of Design and began her career as a stylist, with work featured in Vogue Taiwan, Harper’s Bazaar, and Nylon Germany. Over time, she transitioned into visual art, drawn to painting as a more direct form of self-inquiry and expression.

A self-taught painter, Lee’s practice merges abstract geometry, mysticism, and intuitive mark-making. Her work often incorporates meditative and ritual-based processes, reflecting her interest in consciousness as something fluid and unbound by external labels. Through fluid lines and layered forms, she traces inner states that resist language yet are deeply felt.

Her paintings have been presented in group and solo exhibitions in New York and Taiwan, and her projects often extend into interactive formats such as oracle cards and book works. Rooted in both personal history and a search for collective resonance, Lee’s work invites viewers to pause, reflect, and recognize belonging not as a fixed destination but as a presence that arises within.


Artist Statement

My artistic practice begins with a question that continues to follow me: What does it mean to belong?

Having left Taiwan nearly a decade ago, the word home has grown increasingly ambiguous. Childhood memories remind me of a place filled with love, yet also of constraint—a space where expressing my true self was not always safe. From this, I realized that belonging is not only something given from the outside; it is something we cultivate from within.

To explore this, I turn away from figuration and toward abstract geometry, fluid lines, and layered forms. My process often involves meditation and card rituals, which transform painting into a dialogue with the subconscious. The compositions that emerge—branching shapes, drifting patterns—mirror the unpredictable movements of thought and emotion.

I see each work not as a completed narrative, but as a meditation in progress. They resist fixed meaning, instead opening space for viewers to enter quietly, to feel rather than decipher. In this way, the work is less about offering answers than about holding presence.

Through these gestures, I hope to create spaces where the fragmented nature of self can be witnessed with gentleness, and where belonging reveals itself—not as certainty, but as the freedom to dwell within uncertainty.


https://www.yianleearts.com/