Mural Artist Anthony Lee Brings Detroit’s History and Culture to Life on the City’s Walls

It was RoboCop that first introduced me to Anthony Lee’s work. 

When I heard that TAAF staff would be meeting in Detroit for our summer retreat, I remembered reading online about a must-see RoboCop mural on a building in the city. Being a fan of the film, I planned to go snap a quick photo. But after a little research, I discovered that the artist, Anthony Lee, had done a number of high-profile pieces including an official mural of Vincent Chin and a tribute to legendary Detroit musicians. So during our staff retreat I took the opportunity to meet up with Lee to learn more about his story.

We met at Moka & Co, a Yemeni coffee shop in the Cass Corridor neighborhood, where Lee had painted murals on the interior walls. As we chatted about his art background, he shared how as a student at the College for Creative Studies, he had felt somewhat lost until a chance opportunity ended up being a defining moment for him. A teacher passed on a gig to him—a mural for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. After completing it, Lee realized, “I could be doing this for the rest of my life—this is it. At the time in art school, I was painting small canvases or doing installations, sculptures, and performances. But nothing really hit like that. I felt it deep in my bones.”

I asked Lee what it was about mural painting that really spoke to him. “I love murals because you get to use your full body,” he explained. “You engage with the wall, which not only keeps you physically active, but it also forces you to engage in new environments. You get to learn about new spaces, about the area and its people." Mural art allowed Lee to combine his love of drawing and painting with his aspirations of social practice and engaging the community. “Sometimes I do stuff for nonprofits. Sometimes I do stuff for mom and pop restaurants. I’ve worked with schools that were in danger of being shut down. I’ve done stuff for the Pistons, MotorCity Casino. I like that people engage with it, so you have an opportunity to guide people's experience for the better.”

One of Lee’s murals has particular significance, both for him personally and the Asian American community. In 1982, Detroit was rocked by the brutal and racially motivated murder of Vincent Chin, made more shocking by the lack of jail time for the murderers. It was a pivotal moment for the Asian American civil rights movement. In 2022, Lee was approached by the original lawyers in the case, and commissioned by American Citizens for Justice to paint a mural of Vincent Chin commemorating the 40th anniversary of his death. “It was such an honor. I had been trying to do something with Chinatown in Detroit for a long time. It had been abandoned since the 80s, but I didn't know why. Why was this a ghost town? And it took me 10+ years to figure out that there's layers of trauma, and healing had not been addressed.” 

Lee approached the mural from a unique perspective—it’s a painting of a photo of Vincent Chin with small offerings in the style of an ancestor shrine. “It was a gesture of love, appreciation, and remembrance. I knew a lot of people were going to see it. It was an opportunity for people to also maybe learn something about our culture and some of our values too.”

We talked about his incorporation of Asian themes and characters into his work, like Chinese lettering and other visual elements. Asked how he felt his identity as an Asian American impacted his art, he shared, “For the first 20+ years of my life, I was pretty rebellious in my family. I've always loved my culture, but being a first generation Chinese American child of two Vietnam War immigrants, I was still finding myself in-between worlds. I never thought I would represent our culture. But through time, when people who have never been around Asian people talked to me as if I'm an ambassador, I realized no matter how good you are, you're always going to be seen as an ambassador for your culture. You don't have to represent your culture, but if they're already going to make that decision, you might as well represent that as best as you can.”

And celebrating the Asian American legacy in Detroit, and its revitalization, is very important to Lee now. He participated in the inaugural Detroit Chinatown Block Party, part of the Detroit Chinatown Vision Committee's initiative to develop the new Pan-Asian neighborhood surrounding the former Detroit Chinatown. Lee said the block party event was planned both to build the hype but also show that there is community: “I have a group of Asian artist friends and we've been doing stuff together since 2020. They hit us up. And I connected them to my friend who does music, and he connected them to other DJs, and then they got some food vendors. Everyone did well. I sold out on t-shirts, sold tons of paintings and prints. Everyone had a blast. So many people came—thousands of people. My friend was saying, ‘I’ve never seen so many Asians in Detroit in all my life.’” 

The hope is that Asian Americans, most of whom have moved to the suburbs, will see that the community can be safe, vibrant, and thriving. “Now they can see that there are people willing to spend money there. It was safe and had tons of security. They cleaned up and it looked good, like a real festival. Spirits were high. They had a dragon dance, different cultures were there—Indian, Hmong, Thai, Viet. People who weren’t Asian came to enjoy it too. We’re headed for, maybe, a renaissance. The community is awake.” Lee hopes to paint more murals in the Chinatown neighborhood and restore some old walls that have faded.

In addition to these projects, Lee has painted over 260 murals. One of his favorite projects was for City Walls Detroit and People Mover for the 2024 NFL Draft. He painted a tribute to Motown singers and Detroit legends for tourists to see when they visited for the NFL Draft. Located at the Bricktown People Mover station, the mural features Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Eminem, and Big Sean.

And that RoboCop mural? That was for a dispensary called the Detroit Grass Station (built over a gas station). Lee says the proprietors knew it was a matter of time before they’d be shut down due to a local ordinance, but they wanted to show some love for the city. They asked Lee to paint Detroit pop culture heroes—the wall actually features four characters: RoboCop, Axel Foley, Magnum P.I., and Tim the Toolman. The mural, made when Lee was first starting out, is now a landmark on Google, and he gets tagged on posts from people around the world.

To see more of Anthony Lee’s work, you can check out his Instagram.

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