Language is the first material I ever learned to wrestle with. Letters slip, sounds bend, meanings fall apart and rebuild themselves. I don’t correct the mistake, I follow them. I let the misreadings, repeats, stumbles, and phonetic reroutings show me a truer path. My work begins where language stops behaving.

       I collage, stitch, tear, layer, and wear words until they become objects, tactile things you can hold, or confront, or walk around. Dyslexia isn’t a barrier here; it’s the engine. Every red word, every fragmented line, every sewn edge carries the rhythm of how I actually read the world.

      Across paper, fabric, thread, marker, and collage, I build pieces that slow you down. They ask you to move through language the way I do, out of order, sideways, sounding it out, piecing it back together. The Red Words series, the Affirmation Cloak, the First Amendment flags, the phonetic poem collages, the chapbooks, they’re all different forms of the same instinct: to rebuild meaning from the scraps it leaves behind.

       My work is part poem, part garment, part mispronunciation, part confession. Each collection feels like a visual diary of the way language hits me, how it tangles, how it comforts, how it overwhelms, how it becomes something I can finally claim. In every sewn line and every layered page, I’m learning to make peace with the instability of words, and to show that broken language can still speak clearly.

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Bio:

          EJ Lee is an interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges phonetic language, mixed-media collage, poetry, and wearable forms. Rooted in her lived experience with dyslexia, Lee reconfigures English through sound-based spelling, fragmented text, and hand-sewn mark-making. Her practice investigates how language can become both barrier and material, something to decode, touch, confront, or wear.

         Working across paper, fabric, thread, and found text, Lee creates visual poems, sewn garments, flags, and layered collages that slow the viewer’s reading and challenge traditional expectations of legibility. Through repetition, disruption, and texture, she transforms misreadings into meaning, and personal difficulty into a tactile aesthetic.

          Lee holds a B.A. in Art and an MFA, and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including juried shows, academic galleries, and a 2024 presentation at an art fair in Paris. Her ongoing practice spans studio work, chapbook publications, and conceptual wearable art. She lives and works in the United States.