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 group exhibitions include 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.
Through an interest in critical cultural analysis and understanding alienation as a social ill, they explore the politics imbued in affective relations to nonhumans and spaces, both public and private, as a method to uncover social constructs, systems of value, and belief. Working across sculpture, moving image, performative gestures, and installation, their practice reconfigures the material consequences of infrastructures, physical and ideological, to highlight tension between care and neglect. Humor and absurdity function as both method and critique, borrowing from the aesthetic language of kitsch and commerce to mark how our desire for connection has a market value.