Grace Lillian Lee

A descendant of the Meriam Mer people of Erub (Darnley Island), one of the eastern islands of the Torres Strait, Grace Lillian Lee was born and raised in Cairns, Queensland. Lee uses fashion and accessories to represent her diverse cultural heritage. Her mother is of German, Danish and English descent, while her father was born on Thursday Island to a Chinese father (a pearl diver) and a Torres Strait Islander mother. Lee's father was raised as Chinese because when he was young it was considered better not to identify yourself as being of Indigenous descent. In 2010, after graduating in Fashion Design from RMIT University in Melbourne, Cairns-born Lee took her grandmother back to the Torres Strait to connect with her family, fifty-seven years after she had left.

Lee uses fashion and adornment to represent her diverse cultural heritage, while being inspired by the beauty of the ocean and the Great Barrier Reef. Lee has become known for her wearable interpretations of Torres Strait Island weaving techniques, known as prawn-weaving. Swapping the traditional palm leaf for pre-dyed cotton webbing, Lee pushes the boundaries of traditional techniques to create layered woven body sculptures and accessories. By bringing such techniques into the contexts of both art and fashion, Lee has engaged a wide audience, allowing her to develop a successful business based on woven accessories, that celebrate and explore her lineage.

"I think prawn-weaving as a technique travelled down from Papua New Guinea due to the pearling industry. Torres Strait is a very multicultural place because of this industry. I was actually taught the techniques by renowned artist, Uncle Ken Thaiday from Darnley Island, whom I met in a gallery whilst living in Cairns. We used to visit each other's studios to share stories and swap different making techniques" - Grace Lillian Lee interview with Michelle Boyde, Design Online, 2016

Lee is the founder of the CIA Indigenous Fashion Performance, which began in 2013, and has also curated and produced Indigenous Fashion Performances in Papua New Guinea, Melbourne, Adelaide and Darwin. Under her newly established company, Grace Lillian Lee Productions Pty Ltd, Lee recently produced Intertwined, a fashion performance at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

With a strong desire to work with communities, Lee encourages creative expression by guiding members towards developing their art into fashion and adornment in a contemporary platform. As consultant and mentor, she has worked with the Darnley Island community in the Torres Straits, the Northern Territory communities, Nauiyu and Katherine, as well as Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Text by Kylie Neagle from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art in the Classroom volume 1, 2019.

Grace Lillian Lee always knew she would be an artist and designer. In November 2018, she presented an artist talk and facilitated a workshop at 'How to teach Aboriginal art, a professional development session for educators held at the Art Gallery of South Australia. We sat down with her to find out more about her art making and her suggestions for educators.

When did you first become interested in art?

Both my mum and dad are very creative people, it's in my blood. My earliest memory is sleeping in my dad's arm and having my ear against his chest, listening to his breathing as he painted. I think I was about two years old.

Why are you an artist?

I am a hands-on person and it's the best form of self-expression I know.

What did you enjoy when you were a child?

It was my priority to have a studio space to create. I remember setting up a studio space in the laundry and eventually moving the family out of the dining room. I like to create environments and an atmosphere, so I would go to the op shop and buy things, deconstruct second-hand clothes and dress up and throw little parties with my family.

Exposed Resilience, Future Woven Floral Forms (black) 3

Exposed Resilience, Future Woven Floral Forms (black) 3

Lee’s Future Woven Floral Forms collection was created during the COVID pandemic in response to a 1948 photograph of her grandmother Marcella in her wedding dress on her wedding day on Waiben (Thursday Island), Zenadh Kes. The collection was first presented at the Cairns Art Gallery in 2020, with select black and white pieces shown in the Exposed Resilience exhibition at Station Gallery, Melbourne in 2023. Each creation reflecting power and resilience while expressing deep personal and cultural meaning. In 2010, Lee and her grandmother visited the islands of Zenadh Kes. For Marcella, the trip was a homecoming fifty-seven years after she had left the islands; for Lee, it reconnected her to her Zenadh Kes heritage. Since then, Lee has explored and celebrated her cultural heritage through weaving, and indeed many of her works honour her grandmother. Exposed Resilience revisits the experience of Marcella and references the strength and endurance of a matriarch raising a family while withstanding the systemic repression of culture.

One of the works from Exposed Resilience, Future Woven Floral Forms (black) 3, 2020, features intricately woven black cotton webbing, which has been coiled into a tight formation, from which tendrils cascade. When worn, the piece, with its voluminous top, becomes a protective, armour-like collar, guarding the wearer. Although Lee does not use organic materials – such as the palm fronds that the grasshopper-weaving technique traditionally utilises – her spiralling formations of cotton and canvas evoke cascading plants and flowers inhabiting their natural environments. Future Woven Floral Forms (black) 3 simultaneously weaves together family, culture and art while bringing together past, present and future.

Text by Gloria Strzelecki, Radical Textiles Catalogue, 2024

Grace Lillian Lee, Meriam Mir people, Erub (Darnley) Island, Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, born Cairns, Queensland 1988, Intertwined, 2015, Cairns, Queensland, cotton, 43.0 x 38.0 cm; Acquisition through Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art supported by BHP 2016, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, © the artist.

In the Collection

Intertwined is an intricate example of ‘prawn weaving’. The tightly folded basketry technique is traditionally executed in pandanus, palm leaf or banana leaves, a practice that travelled to the Torres Strait from Papua New Guinea as part of the late-nineteenth century pearling industry. Lee has translated its neat folds into dyed cotton webbing. Having learnt the technique from senior Erub artist Uncle Ken Thaiday, celebrated for his ceremonial headdresses, Lee has drawn on the performative and ceremonial traditions of the Torres Strait to produce an innovative form of body adornment.

Intertwined was created as part of the 2015 Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. Lee was invited to respond to the South Australian Museum collections, in particular the mineral and marine collections. She commented that discovering what ‘these creatures do to camouflage themselves really made me think about my family’s stories and what they have done to fit in and not stand out’.[1]

[1] Grace Lillian Lee in correspondence with Margaret Hancock and Coby Edgar, 17 June 2015, 'Tarnanthi:Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art', Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2015, p. 149.

Grace Lillian Lee, Meriam Mir people, Erub (Darnley) Island, Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, born Cairns, Queensland 1988, Future Woven Floral Forms (black) 3, 2020, Cairns, Queensland, canvas, cotton webbing, (dimensions variable); June Porter Fashion Fund 2023, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, © the artist

  • Look up Erub (Darnley Island) on a map of Australia. What is the distance from Erub to where you live? Investigate what it is like there including the flora, fauna and climate.
  • Uncle Ken Thaiday taught Lee to weave. What is a skill you have been taught by someone close to you?
  • Compare Lee's work to that of Lola Greeno and Maree Clarke. How do these two works communicate similar ideas about the enduring culture of First Nations people?
  • Clothing can sometimes be a form of expression. Create a body adornment that celebrates who you are. You may like to include elements that represent your family, culture, values or personal qualities and hobbies.
  • Lee's work is sometimes monochromatic. Create a body adornment using paper/cardboard of only one colour. Experiment with ways you can fold, cut, tear, scrunch and weave the paper to create texture and movement in your piece.

More for the classroom

During Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art in the Classroom Lee facilitated a collaborative painting workshop. Teachers were divided into groups of five. Using fabric paint, each participant made marks on one large sheet of calico which covered the table. Grace played music, which got everyone up moving and dancing. As Grace changed the music, the teachers moved in a clockwise direction and continued to paint - this time on a different section of the fabric, adding to the previous design. The teachers continued to move around the table and then around the room. The results were incredible! With collaboration as the key focus for the activity, educators came together to create a unique design, informed by their energy in response to music. This process could easily be replicated with students - of any age - in your class, you could encourage students to design a set of symbol/s or geometric patterns that represent their individual stories and histories.