Ken Lum – Residency Coordinator
Canada
Bio
Ken Lum participated as a Vancouver-based Residency Coordinator for the Vancouver Biennale International Artist Residency Program in 2014. Ken Lum was born in Vancouver, Canada but presently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he is a Professor in the School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania.
Ken Lum is the winner of the 2019 Gershon Iskowitz Prize. This award is presented annually to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada. It includes a $50,000 cash prize and a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario within two years. The prize is named for painter Gershon Iskowitz (1921–1988), who founded the prize privately in 1986 to support the development of artists in Canada.
From 2000 to 2006 Ken Lum was head of the graduate program in studio art at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, where he taught from 1990 until 2006. Lum joined the faculty of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, in 2005 and worked there until 2007. He has been an invited professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst, Munich, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and the China Art Academy, Hangzhou.
Lum is co-founder and founding editor of Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. He has published extensively, and a book of Lum’s writings, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, is forthcoming from Walter Koenig Books. In addition he recently completed an artists’ book project with philosopher Hubert Damisch that was launched with Three Star Press, Paris.
Lum was Project Manager for Okwui Enwezor’s The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945 – 1994 (2001). He was also co-curator of the 7th Sharjah Biennial (2005), and Shanghai Modern: 1919 – 1945 (2005).
Lum has exhibited widely, including São Paulo Biennial (1998), Shanghai Biennale (2000), Documenta 11 (2002), the Istanbul Biennial (2007), and the Gwangju Biennale (2008), Moscow Biennial (2011) and the Whitney Biennial (2014). He has published many essays on art.
He has also realized permanent public art commissions for the cities of Vienna, Vancouver, Utrecht, Leiden, St. Moritz, Toronto, and St. Louis.