Provenance:

Donated by the artist; sold to benefit the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

Note:

Ken Lum is a key figure in the Vancouver conceptual and post-conceptual school of artists that includes, most notably, Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham and Ian Wallace. Working in a range of media that includes painting, photography, installation and large-scale public commissions, Lum addresses issues of personal and cultural identity with an edge of social critique. Particularly attuned to the individual’s rights in our age of globalization and migration, Lum’s work, spanning over 40 years, was the subject of a major 2011 survey at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Photo-text works such as I Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or Cry (2013), along with his mock low rent strip mall signs and his staged portraits, are among Lum’s signature works.

A prolific and celebrated creator, critic, writer and teacher, Lum was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow in 1999 and a Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts award in 2007. In 2012, he left Vancouver to assume the position of Director of the Undergraduate Fine Art Program at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania School of Design.