Yaniya Lee is a Toronto-based writer and editor interested in the ethics of aesthetics. 

Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Flash, FADER, Vulture, VICE Motherboard, Canadian Art, and C Magazine. 

She was a founding collective member of MICE Magazine and is a member of the EMILIA-AMALIA working group, the latter of which was artist-in-residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the summer in 2017. Lee has participated in residencies at Banff (2017), the Blackwood Gallery (2018), Gallery 44 (2018) and Vtape (2019-2020).

In November 2019, Lee and curator Denise Ryner co-convened the Bodies, Borders, Fields Symposium in Toronto. The 3 day series of workshops, performances and talks revisited a 1967 roundtable conversation from artscanada magazine on the theme of “black.” Together, Lee and Ryner guest-edited Chroma, the fall 2020 issue of Canadian Art magazine, dedicated entirely to black artists and black art histories. Lee is Senior editor-at-large at Canadian Art magazine.

Lee was previously on the editorial advisory committees for Fuse and C Magazine, and she now sits on the board of directors of Mercer Union. Lee teaches Art Criticism at the University of Toronto.