Jenna Mayilema Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman, and KarraJarri woman with Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.
Her practice interrogates language, materiality, and inherited narratives through immersive installation, works on paper, sculpture, and multimedia. Lee examines the spaces between words and the subtleties of language, drawing overlooked nuances into materially driven responses to colonial archives and systems of knowledge.
Working primarily with books as material, Lee engages dictionaries and language publications that have flattened First Peoples’ languages. Using Larrakia linguistics as a guiding framework, she extracts and reworks narratives embedded within these texts. Through deconstruction and reconstruction, she translates them into new forms that respond to the limits and residues of colonial knowledge systems, bringing forward the histories and structures embedded within the materials.
Lee has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Setouchi Triennale 2025 on Teshima Island, Japan; Awakening Histories at Monash University Museum of Art in 2025; The Neighbour at the Gate at National Art School Gallery in 2025; the TarraWarra Biennial 2023; Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria; and the inaugural Hyphenated Biennial. Institutional solo exhibitions include Written in stone and seed and star at Edith Cowan University Art Gallery in 2026 and Of Smoke and Rain at Northern Centre for Contemporary Art in 2025.
Her practice has been supported through a number of competitive national and international residencies, including at the Singapore Art Museum in 2026 and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Virginia, USA in 2027. She has also undertaken the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial MAITRI Residency Exchange in India; a residency at Kyoto Art Center supported by Creative Australia; the First Nations Ainu Cultural Exchange in Nibutani, Hokkaidō; and residencies with Desa in Ubud, Bali; Megalo Print Studio in Canberra; and was a Gertrude Contemporary studio artist from 2024–2026.
Lee’s work has been recognised through numerous awards, including the 2024 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, the 2023 Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (Emerging Artist), the 2020 Wandjuk Marika 3D Memorial Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), the 2019 Dreaming Award presented by Creative Australia, and was one of 5 shortlisted artist for the Venice Biennale for 2026.