For This Chicago Artist, the Southside Is Where It All Starts
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You can trace a direct line from Mia Lee's roots in Chicago to her point of view as a painter. Growing up as a southside native of Caribbean descent, Lee developed a particular perspective on navigating life as a Black woman—a factor that’s helped her stand out in the crowded scene of emerging artists who call the city home.
Lee uses painting as a storytelling tool to connect the lore of her family’s past to the experiences of the Black diaspora today. The concept of legacy is at the forefront of her work. “The web is crazy," she says of her family history, talking to BAZAAR on a recent Zoom, "but it all makes sense when you sit down and really try to dissect it. All of these stories are so vivid. I recreate the scenes in how I interpret them.”
Lee paints in a graphic, almost cartoon-like style. Her color palette is striking and intense (vivid greens, brash reds, blues, and of course black), but not agitating. The influence of artist George Condo is detectable, but it’s not reductive–the styling of her subjects, the emotive aspect of her paintings, and the overt Blackness allow for Lee’s visual language to stand on its own.
For Lee, black is the richest of all colors and is symbolic of the Black diaspora’s richness in culture. Used across many of her works, it does not stand, thematically, for darkness; it simply depicts skin tone. Three core figures appear over and over in her art: The Gentleman, The Lady, and The Demon. The first two represent familiar human experiences and emotions. The demon, however, serves to represent vices, insecurities, and imperfections.
“Those are the types of things that attract me,” she says. "Never did I think that it would be considered a high, elevated art, or some type of fine art. It’s something I’ve always been drawn to, and it just so happened that artists that I ended up discovering that have come before me are considered the elite artists of the world, which proved to me that art doesn’t have to have the cleanest lines or be the most realistic.”
Lee is interested in the universalities across the diaspora, citing the “head nod,” for example, a gesture many Black folks use to acknowledge each other in passing. “It’s those things that we get that no one ever will, and we will never have to explain them,” she says.
“One of the first paintings I did was The Gentleman in Green. He was sitting on a crate, and for me, that experience is being on the south side and just being outside. It’s casual, that’s the seating we use. I’ve got people in New York telling me that’s what they do, too. People in the South, as well. It’s the casual way of life on a hot day. These are cultural experiences that we’ve carried on for so long.”
Lee's family encouraged her to pursue art from the jump. “My grandmother went to Tuskeegee and got a degree in piano,” she says. “How many Black women do you know from that era that did that?” They poured into her, which in turn, motivated her to explore the many realms of art and culture: piano, fashion design, visual art–literally anything she showed an interest in.
Like many creatives, Lee found the period of lockdown to be a turning point in experimentation. She took advantage of the fact that most of us had resorted to spending all of our time on our phones, which meant that she could become hyper-visible if she was active on social media. She admits to being content crazy at the time, but her growing online presence managed help her sell her first painting, Gentleman in Green, in 2021. You don’t have to scroll deep into Lee’s instagram to pick up on how cool she is; it's immediately clear that she has authentic style, a dope circle of friends, and a strong sense of identity as an artist with love for her community. It makes sense that she has been tapped for fashion collaborations, since her personal style is just as striking as her work: She's a sneaker head with an affinity for street wear, but there’s also a sexiness she implements with the help of silk scarves, furry hats, and feminine denim silhouettes that hug the body.
She also speaks fondly of the Chicago art scene. She’s so anchored to it that she's thinking not only about planting seeds for the current class, but also so that those coming after her will have a the kind of access that high art institutions don’t typically grant to young creators of color. “I love the trajectory that we’re currently on. It’s been a collaborative effort where we aren’t trying to gatekeep things,” she boasts. “Chicago is such a cool city; we don’t need to be like New York or LA. It’s not gonna happen. We want to carve out our own space.”
Lee is adamant, however, that support is crucial to the success of any independent artist. She recognizes that it’s okay to have help and it’s okay to recognize when you can’t juggle a booming career on your own.
“By the end of 2021, my career started to pick up rapidly. I had been managing my own deals on behalf of myself which became super overwhelming. Then I met the best human alive, Kendall Hurns [of Arte House],” she explains. “I mention him because I really want to stress to people that you don't have to do things alone. I've been blessed with a team who understands me and holds me down to the fullest.”
In 2022, she collaborated with Chance the Rapper on an interdisciplinary work titled, “YAH know,” which was unveiled at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The same year, she was tapped for the Jordan Artist Series to create pieces inspired by the spaces that have shaped and changed her life. Now, she’s venturing into an additional medium: fashion.
Style has always been in her orbit. As a kid, she used to sew doll clothes from the scraps of her grandmother’s sewing projects. She even got a degree in costume design at the University of Illinois, and uses her knowledge of dress to depict her figures in vibrant silhouettes. In addition to visual arts, Lee experiments with textiles, having created silk scarves and durags that feature selected artworks and original patterns—one of them landing her the opportunity to design a capsule collection for Urban Outfitters.
“I had a friend who bought one of my scarves and wore it to a wedding and someone at the wedding from Urban got in touch with me. I always envision my prints on clothes, but I don’t consider myself a clothing designer. I’m not reinventing silhouettes, but I knew that if I did it, I wanted it to be a genderless collection,” she says.
With genderless fashion as the starting point for the collection, she knew she wanted to use textures like mohair to emphasize the element of coziness she wanted to bring to it. There are also silk signatures that draw back to her scarves, which contribute to the elevated vision that she had for the capsule. “It’s just big cozy energy,” she says of the ethos. “We’ve been stressing for the past year. And not only cozy, but being more experimental. Let’s wear these crazy-ass patterns! Let’s get out of these norms and let’s be freer with how we dress and express ourselves through clothing.”
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As Mia ascends as a multi-hyphenate creative, she wants to continue to conquer through fashion and accessories. Most importantly, she wants to shake up the art world and the traditional spaces within it.
“It's ‘establishment,’ but we're in a time where it's shapeshifting and we're setting the pace and creating the dialogues right now. People have always been looking to Black women for everything. So why not get out there and do what I need to do?”
Lee recognizes the benefits of sharing on social media and how a certain level of visibility can contribute to one’s success, but she is more interested in creating immersive experiences through her art—for people to see the towering, five foot paintings in person. “That’s when people feel my pieces the most and truly understand my work," she says.
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