Lewis was born in 1957 and has an extensive international art.practice. He was a founding member of Public Access, an artists' and writers' collective in Toronto and has published articles in national and international art magazines. He has had solo exhibitions at the Power Plant, Toronto; the Vancouver Art Gallery; Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica, Cal; the National Gallery of Canada; and the Musee d'art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland (2000), among others. His work was included in the Third Taipei International Bienale of Contemporary Art (2000) and "Intelligence: New British Art 2000" at the Tate Britain. In the early 1990s his reconstruction of Lenin monuments in Toronto and Montreal caused a public stir. He was interested in exploring propaganda and the power of public monuments.