BIO
Taylor Lee (b. 1991, they/them) is a queer artist, curator, and self-described “garbage person” who loves to mix kitsch and cringe for comedic results. Their personal experience of Grief is rooted deeply in the work. The performance of the Self is also a core theme, and they often experiment in installation and performance art. Lee’s projects range across many media and often culminate in autobiographical installations (both online and offline) that are interactive as collaborative relational aesthetics.
Lee recently exhibited a body of work entitled YARD SALE at SPRING/BREAK Art Show LA. This solo exhibition was curated by Janet Loren Hill and Jonell Logan, who won the first and only Single/Palm Award for “Best Curation.” The exhibition was also featured in Hyperallergic and Artnet. A visitor of the installation said “it looks like a redneck Pee Wee Herman lives here,” and honestly that’s the goal.
Lee has exhibited at galleries across the United States, most notably Hashimoto Contemporary, Wassaic Project, Collar Works, Standard Space, Redux Contemporary, and McColl Center. Their works have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Oprah Daily, Nylon, Boston Art Review, and The Jealous Curator among others. Recently, Lee created paper mache heads for Bowen Yang and John Higgins for the new movie Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, streaming now on Peacock.
Lee’s most recent body of work was installed in a U-Haul cargo van. This installation, entitled BORN TO RUN, was both homage to American road trip culture and also a eulogy for Lee’s marriage (which is now over).
Lee is currently based in Charlotte, NC, working primarily out of McColl Center.
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All inquiries can be made via hello@taylorleenicholson.com.
Artist Statement
I make art about the sublime and the ridiculous, which are often the same thing. My sculptures are built from everyday detritus - fast food wrappers, crushed cans, and cigarette butts - that litter our lives and are just as quickly forgotten. They carry the marks of life’s real, unglamorous moments: the cheap meals, the fleeting pleasures, the discardable. In this world, Grief becomes something both personal and universal, packaged in the shape of a crumpled burger wrapper. This is not just trash: they are all relics. They are the detritus of a culture plagued with disposability, and through my work they linger.
Then there’s the landscape—the American West, as vast and tragic as the whole damn experience of living. Loss, like a desert, feels endless - an emotional expanse so large, it’s hard to know where it begins or ends. By evoking the Western landscape, my work reflects the turmoil of grief and memory. The beauty is still there, but it's been distorted by the lens of loss. In the world of road trips, the journey is everything, and in grief, the journey never ends. This odyssey is essentially passing through; the landscapes change, the car gets messier, your body reeks. I remember the trips I took with my ex—the truck stops, the car snacks, the crushed soda cans rolling beneath the seat. These objects—ugly clutter—are the true souvenirs. The big, majestic landscapes may be stunning, but it’s the Gatorade bottle of piss that holds the truth of who we were in those moments.
The road trip itself becomes a metaphor for this kind of emotional journey—a constant movement through liminal space, never staying in one place long enough to feel grounded. The road is both freedom and uncertainty. You drive through these vast landscapes like you're running from something—running from yourself, maybe, or the ghost of someone you used to be. And just like those highway exits that seem to lead nowhere, there's a darkness hiding in the mundane, the unsettling buzz of fluorescent lights at 3 AM in the gas station bathroom. Glowing vacancy signs and push notifications are omens, flies on the windshield become harbingers.
In my work, I’m interested in that tension between what’s seen and what’s hidden, between the mundane and sublime, the beautiful and the unsettling. The small, intimate objects I create are like emotional breadcrumbs—fragments of lives lived, moments you can’t hold onto, but can’t forget either. Together, these elements create a conversation between what we reminisce and what we bury. It’s that unease of being lost and found all at once that I aim to capture. In those moments of discomfort there is beauty. There is freedom. There is life.
