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Artspeak,

Artspeak

Ken Lum

Ken Lum is a Vancouver based artist. His work is concerned with issues of identity, especially as they relate to image production in contemporary urban society. Lum has participated in Documenta XI, Shanghai Biennale, Sydney Biennale, Carnegie International, Sáo Paulo Bienal, Venice Biennale, and Johannesburg Biennale. His writing has been published in Art & Text, Art Margins, and Nka: The Journal of Contemporary African Art and Art & Collections. He is Founding Editor of Yishu: The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. More recently, Lum has been working on a number of public art commissions in Vancouver, Vienna, Toronto, Stockholm, Zurich, and Leiden that involve a language of critical urban politics. Lum was made a Guggenheim Fellow in 1998, and awarded a Killam Award for Outstanding Research.

Exhibitions

  • Speaking Truth to Reconciliation (a project in two parts)

    ABBAS AKHAVAN, KRISTINA LEE PODESVA, MOHAMMAD SALEMY
    September 12–October 31, 2009

    Race: Proposals in Truth and Reconciliation

    What are the possibilities of talking about race today? It is critical that we continue to challenge the conditions of racism, marginality, exclusion, and xenophobia. But how does one approach talking about a subject whose archaeologies of knowledge have been laden with histories of conflict and contestation? And how does one do this with a commitment to generosity, truthfulness, and reconciliation?

    Over the last year, there has been an escalating presence of race in every aspect of social, political, and economic life. Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech in Philadelphia became the most popular video in the world, drawing 1.2 million views in the first 24 hours after it aired. Described by some writers as the most important speech on race given by any American politician, it pointed to the fact that racial discord in the US, although entrenched, distracting, and emotional, was not necessarily intractable. It is this disavowal of intractability that forms the core of Speaking Truth to Reconciliation. Is it possible to engage with a fraught subject, but with a commitment to moving beyond questions of accountability or accusation, towards a conversation that both acknowledges the conditions of exclusion, while seeking shared ground?

    Through an exhibition and forum Speaking Truth to Reconciliation brings together artists, writers, and curators to consider the possibilities of discussing this contested subject and “speaking out.”

    The artists will engage with Artspeak as a site of dialogue and discussion that takes the principle of “truth telling” as a framing device, while considering these concepts poetically, pedagogically, and declaratively.

    Curated by Sadira Rodrigues

  • Artspeak: 5th Anniversary, Exhibition and Sale

    DONNA LEISEN, DAVID STEELE, DOUG MUNDAY, WORKSITE, LAURA LAMB, ARTISTS'S BOOKWORKS, MARK GRADY, REID SHIER, ROB LINSLEY, LAIWAN, ROBERT SHERIN, SFU STUDENT WORK, PATRONS, STAN DOUGLAS, BRENNA GEORGE, MARK LEWIS, HENRY TSANG, ROY ARDEN, ALLYSON CLAY, KATHERINE KORTIKOW, BEHIND THE SIGN, ANNE RAMSDEN, CORINNE CARLSON, CHRISTINE DAVIS, LAUREL WOODCOCK, AMI RUNAR HARALDSSON, KATHY SLADE, PHILLIP MCCRUM, EDWARD POITRAS, WILL GORLITZ, KELLY WOOD, NANCY SHAW, KEN LUM, LORNA BROWN, ROY KIYOOKA, KAY HIGGINS, ELLEN RAMSEY, SARA LEYDON, MARTHA TOWNSEND, MINA TOTINO, FRANK GAUDET, LANI MAESTRO, PANYA CLARK
    February 22–March 23, 1991

  • Drawings, Editions, Prototypes

    KEN LUM
    February 17–March 17, 1990

Talks & Events

  • Summer Reading

    ELI BORNOWSKY, JEFF DERKSEN, MARIA FUSCO, KEN LUM, SVEN LUTTICKEN, JON PYLYPCHUK, CATE RIMMER, MARINA ROY
    August 1–August 31, 2011

    Please enjoy these summer reading “picks” from a selection of local and international artists and writers, including Eli Bornowsky, Jeff Derksen, Maria Fusco, Ken Lum, Sven Lutticken, Jon Pylypchuk, Cate Rimmer, and Marina Roy.

    The PDF is available here.

  • Speaking Truth to Reconciliation (a project in two parts)

    ABBAS AKHAVAN, RANDY LEE CUTLER, KRISTINA LEE PODESVA, KEN LUM, SVEN LÜTTICKEN, ASHOK MATHUR, TED PURVES, MOHAMMAD SALEMY
    October 23–October 24, 2009

    Speaking Out: A Lamentation for Parrhesian Strategies

    Emily Carr University Theatre, Room 301, South Building

    “My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity… Who is able to tell the truth? What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as, and to be considered as, a truth-teller? About what topics is it important to tell the truth?… What are the consequences of telling the truth?… And finally: what is the relation between the activity of truth-telling and the exercise of power, or should these activities be completely independent and kept separate? Are they separable, or do they require one another?”
    —Michel Foucault, Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia (1983)

    In a two-day forum, local and international speakers will consider the possibilities of “speaking out” in the context of cultural production. Speaking out describes adopting a position which is perceived to be oppositional to mainstream cultural production and which chooses to reveal the limitations or structures in the operation of power. Speaking out also implies a consequence to the act of intervening or critiquing these institutions. The act of speaking out is not only intellectual, but extends to the value of the speaker as a social individual, his or her place in society, the consequences on their cultural capital, and the ramifications of talking about things most people do not want to.

    The project will include a publication co-published by Artspeak and West Coast Line.

    FRIDAY OCTOBER 23

    6:30pm / Sadira Rodrigues
    7pm / Ken Lum

    SATURDAY OCTOBER 24

    10am / Sven Lütticken (virtual)
    11am / Ted Purves
    12:30–1:30pm / Break
    1:30pm / Ashok Mathur
    2pm / Mohammad Salemy
    2:30pm / Kristina Lee Podesva
    3pm / Abbas Akhavan
    3:30–5pm / Panel: Randy Lee Cutler, Ken Lum, Kristina Lee Podesva, Ted Purves, Sadira Rodrigues

    Curated by Sadira Rodrigues

  • Artspeak: 5th Anniversary, Exhibition and Sale

    DONNA LEISEN, DAVID STEELE, DOUG MUNDAY, WORKSITE, LAURA LAMB, ARTISTS'S BOOKWORKS, MARK GRADY, REID SHIER, ROB LINSLEY, LAIWAN, ROBERT SHERIN, SFU STUDENT WORK, PATRONS, STAN DOUGLAS, BRENNA GEORGE, MARK LEWIS, HENRY TSANG, ROY ARDEN, ALLYSON CLAY, KATHERINE KORTIKOW, BEHIND THE SIGN, ANNE RAMSDEN, CORINNE CARLSON, CHRISTINE DAVIS, LAUREL WOODCOCK, AMI RUNAR HARALDSSON, KATHY SLADE, PHILLIP MCCRUM, EDWARD POITRAS, WILL GORLITZ, KELLY WOOD, NANCY SHAW, KEN LUM, LORNA BROWN, ROY KIYOOKA, KAY HIGGINS, ELLEN RAMSEY, SARA LEYDON, MARTHA TOWNSEND, MINA TOTINO, FRANK GAUDET, LANI MAESTRO, PANYA CLARK
    February 22–March 23, 1991

Publications

  • There’s No Place Like Home Edition

    Ken Lum, There’s No Place Like Home, 2000. Digital colour print, edition of 100, signed and numbered by the artist. 39″ x 12″. $500

    Ken Lum’s proposal for a public art billboard commission in Vienna was rejected at a very late stage by two officials with affiliation to the Freedom Party, on the grounds that the idea takes “public discussion in the wrong direction”. Developed on the initiative of Vienna’s Museum in Progress, an institution specializing in contemporary art interventions into public or non-art contexts and spaces, the rejected proposal will nonetheless be realized, in collaboration with Vienna’s Kunstalle. These colour images are printed as high quality digital outputs on archival watercolour paper.

    -SOLD OUT-