Lee's projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, and take on different forms with the involvement of participants and change during the course of an exhibition.
He has participated at "Viva Arte Viva," The 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia,[3] curated by Christine Macel, and has been featured in biennials in Venice, Lyon, Liverpool, Taipei, Sydney, Whitney, Shanghai, and Sharjah and Asia Pacific Triennials.
[7] Lee's work also focuses on daily life, and involves staging everyday activities such as sleeping and eating within the museum space.
He documents this experience in a series of photographs, onto which he superimposes lines of text marking one moment from each of the hundred days with the flower.
In 2009, for La Biennale de Lyon, Lee created The Moving Garden (2009 - present), a piece consisting of a granite slab from which visitors may take flowers.
In The Mending Project (2009 - present), a mender is seated at a long table with two chairs against a wall of colorful spools of thread.
After the mending, the visitors can then choose to take away their garment, or leave it at the gallery so that it may be attached to the spools on the wall, and return to collect it at the conclusion of the exhibition.
Lee was inspired to create the piece while helping his mother to recover from surgery, during which time the two would listen to Schubert’s Lieder.
The show was curated by Mami Kataoka, Mori's Chief Curator, and included a survey of Lee's work spanning 20 years, as well as work by other artists such as Yves Klein, John Cage, Allan Kaprow, and Rirkrit Tiravanija to contextualize Lee's practice.
Kataoka highlighted the relevance of Lee's work in light of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami as well as the importance of holding such an exhibition in Japan: “In Japan today, with all of its loss, Lee Mingwei’s efforts have released similarly positive energy towards rebuilding relationally and bringing connectedness into our awareness.
Each singer had chosen a repertoire of three songs, which signal for them an "invitation for dawn," forming a sign of hope in the ongoing moment of global crisis.
Into this challenge, however, the artist injects such a great deal of empathy, respect and open-mindedness that participation and engagement are activated in a very natural way.