Michelle Lee Proksell 媚潇 (b. Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 1985) – A Third Culture Adult, born in Saudi Arabia to ex-patriot American parents. She left the Middle East in 1990 because of the onset of the Gulf War. She is currently an independent researcher, curator, artist, musician, photographer and writer based between Europe and China. The majority of her research and curatorial practice is published under an archive she started, documenting and interviewing emerging digital artists in China at www.netize.net.
She began exploring art curatorial practices as curatorial assistant for new media, digital and Internet art space/gallery in Dallas, TX from 2007 to 2009 and was In-term director of the Pollock Gallery at Southern Methodist University in 2008. While in China, she has co-curated BYOB Beijing, BYOB Shanghai and co-founded a curatorial collective called TRIA PRIMA 三元.
As an artist, she works with video, sound, performance and her ongoing Chinternet Archive – a collection of vernacular digital artifacts from the Chinese Web. She is most interested in the physicality of the Internet and its relationship to human behavior, emotions and social interactions. She sees her role in this world as a cultural translator, using forms of media and text to express her observations from the “in between”, a place she has spent of most of her life while living and navigating through various cultures and countries.