Lisa Chang Lee is a Chinese artist, researcher, and educator based between London and Beijing. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the entanglements of ecology, sound, language, and technology, often drawing from indigenous knowledge systems and spiritual traditions. Working across sound installation, image-making, and AI-generated publishing, her projects investigate listening as a political and poetic act. She is the founder of South of the Sea, a long-term research platform focused on ecological storytelling in tropical island environments. Lisa currently teaches at the Royal College of Art and frequently lectures internationally across art and environmental research contexts.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I was born into an artistic family in Beijing. Growing up, it was remarkably free-spirited and democratic. Both of my parents are artists and academics, so I grew up surrounded by art, film, music, and philosophy from a very young age.

When I was ten, my father made a decision that profoundly shaped my life—-Rather than pushing me further into a rigid Chinese education system, he decided to homeschool me for a year. We travelled across China together, and I learnt mostly everything through play—calligraphy, drawing, and ceramics—but more importantly, I learned how to observe, to question, and to imagine. That year opened up my world and, on hindsight, it taught me to question everything, to seek truth independently, and to live with honesty and generosity.

Later, it was eight-year of rigorous formal training at the Fine Arts High School affiliated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), and then continued my studies in the Printmaking Department at CAFA. In 2012, I moved to the UK and completed my MA in Print at the Royal College of Art. These rather contrasting experiences—freedom and structure, intuition and discipline—have continued to shape both my artistic practice and the way I move through the world.

How do your personal experiences and identity influence your art?

I believe identity is shaped not only by geography but what we are taught and what we resist. I resonate with what Stuart Hall once wrote, “Identity is not an essence, but a positioning,” shaped through historical and discursive processes, as Im growing older I am increasingly grateful for the compass I was given: to question critically and to remain soft while being persistent. These values, embedded in my upbringing, are interwoven with my life experiences between China and the UK. I guess that is why much of my work takes place in contexts where histories are fragmented, ecologies are endangered, and languages falter. Within these spaces, I try to bring an attentiveness shaped by care, multiplicity, and listening.

How has your artistic style evolved over time?

I began within a tradition of technical mastery, grounded in printmaking, painting and drawing. But as I grew older, I found myself increasingly drawn to what lies beyond the frame—time, sound, memory, and sensation.

Today, my practice includes field work, film, installation, and interdisciplinary collaborations. I don’t see this evolution as a rupture from my earlier training, but rather a philosophical and methodological expansion. The foundation built through years of formal education allows me to engage new materials and questions with a grounded confidence. And the freedom I was given as a child—to travel, to think, to feel—reminds me that there is never just one path forward.

Are there any mediums you prefer working with? Why?

Sound has become central to my practice. It moves differently through space—it lingers, seeps, touches. Sound allows me to hold complexity without closure. It is both ephemeral and embodied, much like memory itself. But it’s not just about sound—what interests me is how multiple senses can be activated simultaneously, how perception becomes layered and spatial.

I often return to lens-based medium, not as a tool of documentation, but as a space of repetition, disappearance, and delay. I also write. Writing and drawing, to me, are among the most intimate technologies we possess—portable, poetic, and recursive.

Ultimately, I don’t commit to a single medium. I choose the form that best holds the question I’m asking. Each work proposes its own logic, its own body. And more and more, I find myself stepping back. I rarely say “I made this.” Instead, I say—this work found its own way into the world. It belongs to a conversation, not to a claim.

What do you hope people take away from your art when they experience it?

I hope they feel time slow down. I hope something stirs—gently, or perhaps uncomfortably. I want my work to create perceptual openings, where the visible and invisible can co-exist.

I’m not especially interested in delivering messages; I’m more invested in facilitating encounters. If someone walks away with a deeper sensitivity to the entangled worlds around them—human, animal, mineral, ancestral—then I feel the work has fulfilled its purpose.

Nowadays, I tell people that my projects find their own pathways into the world. I often avoid using the “I” at all. These works don’t speak for me—they speak from somewhere, in response to specific places, urgencies, or communities. My role is to listen closely enough to let them emerge.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

This year and the next two years mark a significant phase in my practice, with several major projects unfolding across both China and the UK. I’m also curating a large-scale institutional exhibition. These projects are not isolated—they’re interconnected through a set of long-standing questions: How do we tell stories across difference? How can we listen—ethically, aesthetically, and ecologicall—to places, languages, and species often excluded from dominant narratives? I’m also asking, more insistently, how far an artist can stretch the contours of their practice—how to remain untethered to fixed categories, yet still accountable.

I’ve recently started a personal blog called Margins & Mutterings, where I share fragmented thoughts—unpolished, unclaimed—among friends, collaborators, and strangers I haven’t yet met. It’s a quiet space for thinking alongside others.

In China, I’m currently collaborating with the curators of the first Frida Kahlo exhibition in China at V&A Design SocietyShenzhen, where I present a multi-channel, interactive sound installation that responds to Frida’s internal spiritual journey. The work, based on my ongoing HZ-0 system, creates sonic landscapes that react to atmospheric changes—almost like a living diary of the environment. This exhibition will tour through multiple venues across mainland China and Taiwan until 2027.

A selection of recent projects will also be on view at the He Xiangning Museum of Art from September to December, followed by the Guangzhou Image Triennial and later on the Beijing Art, Science and Technology Biennale in May 2026.

In the UK, South of the Sea remains the spine of my practice. It is a long-term, interdisciplinary project rooted in Hainan Island that explores indigenous knowledge systems, endangered languages, environmental history, and sonic ethnography. The project weaves together field recordings, collaborative filmmaking, archival research, and installation-based storytelling.

Looking ahead, I plan to deepen this work through sustained collaborations with conservation scientists, linguists, and indigenous communities—developing a multi-sited, ecocentric framework for research-based art practice.

Text & photos courtesy of Lisa Chang Lee

Website: https://www.lisachanglee.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisachanglee