Image: Ken Lum by Ryan Collerd
AHVA alumnus Ken Lum (MFA’85) received two major prizes this year in recognition of his extraordinary artistic career. In February, he won the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. In the words of nominator Brian McBay, Lum’s work “manages to depict great tensions in the collective identity of people and cultures who face the difficulties of authenticity and social belonging.” The work of fellow winners in the category, including Anna Torma, Dana Claxton, Deanna Bowen, Jorge Lozano Lorza, Michael Fernandes, Ruth Cuthand, and Zainub Verjee, is currently on exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta (until February 2021).
Lum also received the 2019 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, presented annually to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada. Awarded by the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario, the $50,000 prize includes a solo exhibition at the AGO, scheduled for 2021. Previous recipients include Liz Magor, General Idea, Stan Douglas, Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, Michael Snow, and Rebecca Belmore. Congratulations, Ken!
Ken Lum graduated with an MFA in Visual Art in 1985 and began his teaching career in the department in 1990. He would go on to become chair of our MFA program (2000–06), before accepting an appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently Marilyn Jordan Taylor Presidential Professor and chair of Fine Arts in the Weitzman School of Design.
Known for his conceptual and representational art in a number of media, including painting, sculpture, and photography, Lum has an extensive exhibition history spanning thirty years, with work in major exhibitions such as Documenta 11, the Venice Biennale, São Paulo Biennial, Shanghai Biennale, Carnegie Triennial, Sydney Biennale, Busan Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Moscow Biennial, and Whitney Biennial, among others. He has realized a number of public art projects for the cities of Vienna, Utrecht, Leiden, St. Moritz, St. Louis, Toronto, and Vancouver, where, for a commission for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, he produced the iconic Monument for East Vancouver illuminated cross, which transformed into a permanent landmark a decades-old graffiti symbol well-known throughout the city’s east side.
A co-founder and founding editor of Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Lum has published extensively, including Everything Is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991–2018, published this year by Concordia University Press. This new book, edited by, Kitty Scott, chief curator at the National Gallery of Canada, includes diary entries, articles, catalogue essays, and curatorial statements.