About Eelyn Lee
Eelyn Lee is an artist and filmmaker of Hong Kong-English heritage. Her films, installations and live performances have been presented at Barbican, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and at international film festivals.
Eelyn's process-led art work explores identity, water ecologies, and multi-species migrations, weaving costume, choreography, ritual, and sound to create new mythologies. Drawing on embodied knowledges, archival research, and speculative thinking, Eelyn works with ensembles of collaborators to devise worlds, where past, present and future simultaneously exist –creating constellations of possible futures. Organising, space-holding, and mentoring are integral components of her practice. In 2018, she co-convened the Social Art Summit - an artist-led review of social art practice.
Art
As a response to the Covid related Asian Hate, Eelyn’s recent body of work reimagines East and Southeast Asian diasporic identities. Works include, Four Quadrants of the Sky 四大神獸 [2023], commissioned by Bloc Projects; long listed for the Aesthetica Art Prize, 2025, and selected for the New Art Exchange Open 2024, where she was awarded the Primary Residency Prize.
Saam Sing 三星 [2021-2024] was exhibited at Graves Gallery [Apr ’24 - Mar ’25], and in 2025, selected for Queer East and Aesthetica Short Film Festival. In 2024, Eelyn made, Ancestral Futures 源流之後, a street procession in honour of the first recorded Chinese people in Sheffield.
Eelyn’s latest moving image work, Anguilla Anguilla, way of the eel [2025] - an honouring of the critically endangered European Eel - was presented at the 14th São Paulo International Architecture Biennale, and will be presented at the 5th Karachi Biennial in January 2027.
Film
In 2015, Eelyn's award-winning short film, Life and Deaf screened at the Berlinale. Monster [2015] - featuring BAFTA / Palme d’Or winner, Anamaria Marinca, and Kingsley Ben-Adir [One Love] - was selected for the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, and in 2017, Creature of the Estuary was selected for the Bogota Short Film Festival.
Eelyn co-wrote and directed the short gothic drama, Born on Sunday Silent [2023, supported by BFI Network], and she is currently developing, Yellow Peril, her debut narrative feature.
