Zenobia Lee (b. 1996, New York, NY) irradiates the perceptual crisis of absent-presences. Though dominos, parasols, drapery, flora, and stilts might otherwise seem trivial, immemorial figures in the history of Caribbean imperialism, Lee insists on monumentalizing these subordinate symbols at queer scales in order to accent their subversive capacities. Rather than imbue these objects with a fantastical potency, Lee combs the archive of colonial modernity for trace records of Caribbean and black diasporic ephemera which have enabled the absurd: subsistence, kinship, and cultural life against hegemonic forces of violence. Plays on scale through monumentalization and massification are the artist’s means of emphasizing the contingent salience of the minor objects and materials at hand. Expressed by any other means, these objets trouvés become less palpable as insurgent forces. Iconic fixtures of coloniality—architecture, privatized land, aesthetic sensibilities—in Lee’s work become penetrable, withered, rusted, overgrown, hybridized, wavering in visual weight and political force. 

Though sculptures finished in rust patina might suggest the potential disfigurement of structural violence from within the course of its own cyclical reproduction, further questions linger in the aluminum casting of select pieces on view: As imperial markets continually and resolutely subsume evermore peripheral landscapes and means of cultural production, what, if anything, will be our creative bequeathment to the future? Do we have, within the frame of atmospheric violence, the material and aesthetic means for our own perdurance? As public, domestic, and other private spaces free from surveillance dwindle, Lee returns viewers attention to the other side of the curtain, where the unmasterable ingenuity of the wretched and their unceded faculty for beauty lies. Jutting from walls, hanging overhead, the perspectival intrigue of Lee’s work lies in its capacity to implicate audiences in the dizzying wars of position that make Lee’s subject.

–David Carré

Zenobia received her MFA at the University of California Los Angeles (2025) after graduating with a BFA from Oberlin College in Ohio (2018). She is the co-founder of Sucking Salt—a collaborative research project focused on archiving Caribbean architecture and aesthetics. In addition to her solo exhibition at Sea View, Zenobia will concurrently present work at Frieze Los Angeles 2026. She has previously exhibited in a two-person show at Deli Gallery in New York (2024). Recent group exhibitions include Weeksville Heritage Center (2026); Chozick Family Art Gallery in New York (2025); Culver Center of the Arts in Riverside, CA (2024); Rachel Uffner in New York (2022); and HOUSING in New York (2020). Her work has also been entered into the permanent collection of North Carolina State Historic Sites and Properties.