Simon Lee works in photography, video, performance and installation. His work has been described as “a powerful metaphor for the random flow of history and a low tech formal tour de force” (New York Times). His fascination with watching dailyness, shooting cinéma vérité, collecting tens of thousands of found photographs and working with actors feed into his process. Lee’s projects include live multi-screen theatrical events, ad-hoc performances in public spaces, single and dual channel films and sculptural installations.

Lee's project Bus Obsura, which transformed a bus into a moving cinematic experience with 1000 apertures, has been produced in ten cities including NYC, London, San Fransisco and Kampala, Uganda. Lee’s film, Where is the Black Beast? was an official selection at the Rotterdam Film Festival and toured internationally. Projects with Eve Sussman include No food No money No jewels, commissioned by EMPAC in Troy, New York; CollusionNoCollusion, a film and live performance in St Petersburg, Russia; and Car Wash Incident, a recursive mystery.

Live pieces include Stalkerpooh, What Lies Behind, All the Reporters Laughed and Took Pictures (performed at the Spring/Break Art Show in NYC) and Are the Birds Happy? (premiered at Gray Area in San Francisco). These works utilized different telephone technologies as a means of guiding live theater.

Lee is a recipient of a 2022 Hewlett 50 Commission in Media Art. Other grants and awards include three New York State Council on the Arts and NYFA grants, support from Cafe Royal Foundation, the British Council, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He has exhibited widely including shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Berkshire Museum, Massachusetts; Roebling Hall, New York; the Moscow International Film Festival; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; Poznan Biennale, Poland; The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn; Tinguely Museum, Basel; Espace Paul Ricard, Paris; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Together with Eve Sussman, Lee co-founded the Wallabout Oyster Theatre, run out of a garage in Brooklyn.