Rozana Lee is a multidisciplinary artist of Indonesian-Chinese heritage. She is based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and holds a Master of Fine Arts with First Class Honours from Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland (2018). Her research is centred on the ideas around migration, belonging, identity and cross-cultural mobility. Working across textile, painting, video, and installation, she explores global histories of encounter and cultural exchange that allow for something shared, both within and beyond existing national and geographic boundaries.
Lee has undertaken artist residencies at Studio Kura, Japan in 2024, Making Space, Guangzhou in 2019, and Instinc, Singapore in 2016. In 2023, she participated in the Zhelezka Project mobile research and residency in Central Asia supported by the Volkswagen Foundation and subsequently received a fellowship at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig, Germany in 2024. She has exhibited widely in public galleries and artist run spaces in New Zealand and overseas. Recent projects and exhibitions include Spring is as sweet as shirotsumekusa, Studio Kura, Fukuoka, Japan, 2024; Memory lines, City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi, 2024; Sekali pendatang, tetap pendatang, Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 2023; Several degrees of attention, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth, 2022; Crossings, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, 2021; Te wheke: pathways across Oceania, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2020; Reconfigure(d), Making Space, Guangzhou, 2019; Two oceans at once, St Paul St Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 2019, and Singapore sensation, Instinc, Singapore, 2016.
Lee has been a finalist in a number of New Zealand art awards: Molly Morpeth Canaday Award (2022, 2021, 2017, 2015), National Contemporary Art Award (2021), Estuary Art and Ecology Award (2022, 2018, 2017), Parkin Drawing Prize Award (2019, 2016), Wallace Art Award (2019, 2018), and Walker & Hall Waiheke Art Award (2017, 2016). She was recipient of the 3rd Prize for the Estuary Art and Ecology Award (2022), the People’s Choice Award for the National Contemporary Art Award (2021), and the People’s Choice Award for the Estuary Art and Ecology Award (2018). Her works are held in private and public collections overseas and in New Zealand, including Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Whaiwhetū and the Arts House Trust.