Lee Mingwei was born in Taiwan in 1964 and currently lives in New York. Lee creates both participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness on their own, and one-on-one events, where visitors explore these issues with the artist himself through eating, sleeping, walking, and conversation. Lee's projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, and take on different forms depending on the participants. Time is central to this process, as Lee's installations often change during the course of an exhibition.

Lee received an MFA from Yale University in 1997, has had solo exhibitions internationally including Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Fabric Workshop and Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and has been featured in biennials in Venice, Lyon, Liverpool, Taipei, Sydney, and New York.