Billy Lee

United Kingdom

Artist background: Billy Lee was born of Chinese and Dutch parentage in Uitenhage, South Africa. He received his BFA, 1st Class Honours, from Birmingham College of Art and Design, and his MFA at the Royal College of Art, London (RCA). Upon graduation from the RCA, he received the prestigious award of Kennedy Scholar, to attend the Centre for Advanced Visual Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was later named a Fellow. He remains the only artist ever to receive the award of Kennedy Scholar.

Achievements in his increasingly growing international reputation include: recipient of the Giacomo Manzu Special Prize at the '7th Henry Moore International Sculpture Exhibition’ in Japan (1991) At the Fujisankei Biennale in 1993, he was awarded the Rodin Prize for his work exhibited in the Hakone/Utsukushi-ga-hara Open Air Museum, Japan. In 2003 his work was included in ‘Thinking Big Exhibition’ catalogue at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy.

Lee currently resides in the United States where he is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.