About — Michelle Lee Johnson

Michelle Lee Johnson

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Michelle Lee Johnson (b. 1996 California, USA) lives and works in London. They hold a Bachelors (Hons) in Interdisciplinary Studies from New York University and have recently completed their Masters of Fine Art from Goldsmiths University, London, UK. Selected duo and group exhibitions include Plicnik Space Initiative (London, UK), INDUSTRA (Brno, Czech Republic), Hartslane Gallery (London, UK), Salón ACME (Mexico City, Mexico), Deptford X (London, UK), Bacio Collective (Brno, Switzerland), Emily Harvey Foundation (New York, NY), Artlab Gallery (Ontario, Canada), and Parasol Projects (New York, NY). They have been awarded the Eaton Fund grant, Tower Hamlets Community Fund, and an Art Fund fellowship at Cell Project Space.

Working across sculpture, moving image, performative gestures, and installation, their practice examines processes of subjectivity, particularly the coercive mechanisms through which behaviour, desire, and affect are regulated. Drawing on the aesthetic languages of kitsch, commerce, and popular culture, they investigate how desires for connection, authenticity, and fulfilment are produced. Techniques of reproduction form sculptural interventions where objects hold attachments to belonging and transformation. In doing so, their work reconfigures the material consequences of physical and ideological infrastructures to expose how a system that manufactures wants and withholds promises produces fantasies of freedom and authenticity.

They have a particular interest in sites that collapse a boundary between public and private—the street, the surveilled public square, or the train—to probe questions of ownership and authorship. At times, a city animal operates as a mirror for systems of value, where staged encounters attempt to recast our relationship to place and nonhuman entities.

Education

2022 - 2024 Goldsmiths University
Master of Fine Art, London, UK

2015 - 2019 New York University
BA Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York, USA
magna cum laude

Awards and Residencies

2025
Artist in residence at INDUSTRA Art
2024
Eaton Fund
Art Funded Fellowship at Cell Project Space
Tower Hamlets Grant, project funding
2019
Thesis Mothers of Our Pearls awarded Honors
Horn Family Fund for Environmental Studies, project funding
2016
Founder’s Day Award

Duo Exhibitions

2025
Force with no net sum, INDUSTRA, Brno, CZ

Selected Group Exhibitions

2026
Studio 1.2, Guilds House, Rollins St, London, UK

2025
Step 3. ????, Plicnik Space Initiative, London, UK
Despite Collective Part II, Ethereal Maison, London, UK
1, 2, 3, Alt!, Project sitnaltA, London, UK
2024
A Letter from a Friend, Bacio Collective, Bern, SWTZ
be still [Degree Show], Goldsmiths, London, UK
Salón ACME, CDMX
2023
Deptford X Fringe, London, UK
In-term, London, UK 
Approximate Distance, London, UK 
Nightlife, London, UK 
Loess Collective presents Taste the Difference, London, UK
2022
Washed Ashore, Fort Tilden Beach, USA
2021
Years ago, still show, Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, USA
2019
Museum for Future Fossils, Artlab Gallery, Ontario, CAN
Gallatin Arts Festival, Gallatin Galleries, New York, USA 
2018
Slicing, Burning, Boiling, Parasol Projects, New York, USA
2017
Climate Action Conference, Tisch, New York, USA
Cartas de Cuba, Ludwig Foundation, Havana, CUBA

Public Programming

2024
Permit to Dream: Touch, Sight, and Sound Method, Cell Project Space, London, UK
2024
Sunday Service: Artist Talk & Tour, London, UK
2019
Half-Title Print Fair, Gallatin School, New York, USA

Publications
Floorr Magazine, Issue 35, 2025
GERLIS, Melanie. Filthy Fox Auction. published online and in print on December
9th 2023 on The Financial Times FT Weekender.
The Gallatin Review. Volume 32. New York, USA, 2018.

2026