Born 1971 in Kota Kinabalu, Yee I-Lann received her BA in Visual Arts from the University of South Australia in 1993 and is currently based in Kuala Lumpur. Yee has established herself over the past 20 years as one of the region’s leading contemporary artists, known for her digital photocollage and video works that deftly employ a complex, multi-layered visual vocabulary drawn from historical references, popular culture, archives, and everyday objects – works that speculate on issues of culture, power, and the role of historical memory in social experience, often with particular focus on themes and motifs that reference the indigenous cultures of Borneo.
Yee has exhibited widely in museums and biennials around the world. Selected highlights include: Body/Play/Politics in Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan (2016); the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia (2015 and 1999); the Jakarta Biennale, Indonesia (2015); The Roving Eye, ARTER Space for Art, Istanbul, Turkey (2014-15); Finding your place in the world: Asian photomedia, at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2014); Afterimage: Contemporary Photography from Southeast Asia, Singapore Art Museum (2014-15); Suspended Histories, Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2013); Contemporary Commonwealth, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2006); the Singapore Biennale (2006); Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves, ZKM I Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany (2007); and the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fukuoka, Japan (2009). Fluid World, a solo exhibition surveying her major works to date, was presented at Adelaide’s Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia in 2011. She was a member of the curatorial team for the 2013 Singapore Biennale.