Jenna Lee is a First Nations Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri Saltwater woman with mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian (Irish and Scottish) ancestry. Driven to create work that transforms the scars of colonialism, Lee builds on a foundation of her father's staunch teachings of culture and her mother's gentle teachings of paper craft.
With a practice focused on materiality, ancestral material culture and Gulumerridjin knowledge-based method and process, Lee interrogates notions of the archive, histories of colonial collecting, and the lies presented within settler-colonial books and texts. Lee ritualistically analyses, deconstructs, and reconstructs these source materials, language and books, transforming them into forms of cultural beauty and pride.
Lee's work, primarily in immersive installations, includes objects, works on paper, and multi-media. In these, she demonstrates the transformative power of First Nations' ways of being, thinking, and doing on the materials, legacies, and environmental conditions inherited through colonialism.
Lee is represented by MARS Gallery and is on the board of Craft Victoria.