Grace Lillian Lee is deeply interested in exploring relationships between contemporary fashion, design, traditional cultures and communities, and she is particularly focussed on exploring and declaring her cultural connection to Torres Strait Island traditions in contemporary ways.

Lee’s Body Sculpture exhibition in 2016 forms part of the Cairns Art Gallery online First Nations Research Archive developed as part of the Gallery’s online Legacy Archive produced to celebrate the Gallery’s 30th anniversary.

Lee is a descendant of the Doolah family from Darnley Island and her parents come from multicultural backgrounds including Torres Strait Islander, Chinese, English, German and Danish. At an early age Lee was interested in making clothes, which later led her to study fashion at RMIT University in Melbourne.

In 2010, Lee worked closely with Torres Strait Elder Uncle Ken Thaiday Snr, who taught her many of the weaving techniques used to create adornments for ceremonial purposes in the Torres Straits. Lee drew inspiration from these techniques and extended them to create body sculptures for her 2016 exhibition at the Gallery.

Body Sculptures was Lee’s first solo exhibition in Australia and featured four commissioned woven sculptural forms which explored how contemporary fashion and performance intersect with traditional artistic and cultural practices to create a new cultural dialogue.

For this exhibition, Lee worked with acclaimed artist/photographer, Greg Semu, whose dramatic photos of her body sculptures became an exciting extension of her contemporary arts practice.

The four commissioned body sculptures that were purchased for the Gallery’s Collection were a turning point in Lee’s arts practice. Based on these formative works, her style, techniques, use of materials and reputation have grown exponentially. Today Lee is nationally and internationally recognised as an artist, designer, stylist and innovator in the worlds of fashion and art.