gan chin lee
I am an artist and educator whose practice centres on painting, drawing, printmaking and installation, often grounded in a realist visual language that attends closely to everyday life and social history. I received my Diploma in Illustration in 1998, before pursuing Advanced Studies in Mural Painting (2005) and an MA in Fine Art (2008) at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China.
Since 2001, I has taught at The One Academy, where I'm currently lectures in the Fine Art Department. I has developed and led courses in figure anatomy, portrait drawing, material and method, visual language and painting, mentoring a new generation of Malaysian artists and contributing to an emerging discourse on fine art education in the region.
My practice explores the historical, social, and spatial legacies of the Chinese “New Villages” established under the British colonial Emergency. Working primarily through realism – in painting, drawing, and more recently woodcarving and installation – I treat the everyday landscapes of small towns, food stalls, and wooden houses as archives of Cold War histories, migration routes, and labour that rarely enter official narratives.
My research draws on oral histories, family photographs, and fieldwork in different New Villages, which I translate into images that weave together personal memory and collective history. I am particularly interested in how “borrowed” Western modernist models can be unsettled and re-routed through Southeast Asian experiences, materials, and visual habits.
Alongside my studio practice, I teach in a fine art department where I am involved in developing a more place-based, decolonial pedagogy for young artists. Across these strands, my work asks how visual storytelling can reclaim minor histories and propose more plural, embodied ways of seeing Malaysia and the region.
My practice has been recognised with awards and honours such as the Malaysian Emerging Artists Award (2009), the Graduate Creation Award, CAFA Beijing (Bronze, 2008), the TaoYuan Contemporary Art Award (2017), and finalist for The Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2021). My works have been permanently collected by the National Visual Art Gallery, Galeri Petronas, Singapore Art Museum, KADIST Foundation, as well as several private art museums in South East Asia region