Thesis: Biomedicine and Contemporary Art in the Sinophone Cultures (1989-Present)
Supervised by Dr Wenny Teo and Professor Jo Applin
In this thesis I focus on how biomedicine and biotechnology— understood as the technological use of biological reproduction and transgenic practices, and of biosecurity and life-control systems— transforms image and art making in the Sinophone cultures from the late 1980s to the present day. Looking at the practices of artists such as Li Shan, Lu Yang, Pei-Ying Lin, Candice Lin, Angela Su and Jes Fan, I examine the ways in which these artists engage with knowledges of biotechnology and biomedicine, and the implications of these for gender, sexuality, race, subjectivity and the conception of ecology. I ask how the artists engage translocal knowledge and visual tropes in their diverse responses to the contemporary biotechnological condition, often uncritically seen as originating in ‘the West’. Further, I explore to what extent a post-anthropocentric ecological ethics is formed through the artists’ distinct means of engaging with discourses of new biomedical technologies.
Education
- PhD History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art
- MA History of Art, University College London
- Thesis: Connecting creative participants online and offline: The web-engaged projects of Ye Funa and Aspartime, supervised by Prof. Briony Fer.
- BA History of Art, University College London
Teaching
- Associate Lecturer for BA3 Lessons in Critical Interpretation 2022/23
- Spring 2020: Guest Lecturer, Global China (MA)
- Autumn and Spring term 2019: Teaching Assistant for BA 2 Frameworks for Interpretation
Publications
- ‘Gender in Chinese Contemporary Art’, Tate Research Centre: Asia, 2018
- ‘Doubting Sex: Examining the Biomedical Gaze in Lu Yang’s Uterus Man (2013)’, immediations. No. 17, 2020
- Dis(Embodying) the Biomolecular Sex: The Lapse of Identity in Jes Fan’s Hormone Works (2017-2018), The Courtauld’s Gender and Sexuality Research Group, 2020
- ‘Art after Pandemic: Reimagining Virus in Pei-Ying Lin’s Virophilia‘, in Séagh Kehoe, Gerda Wielander (eds.) 2022. Cultural China 2021: The Contemporary China Centre Review (University of Westminster Press (UWP))
Research Interests
- Contemporary art and visual culture
- Gender, sexuality, and race
- Feminist and queer technoscience
- Visual medical humanities
- Contagion, disease, and immune system discourses
- Sinophone studies, colonial histories, postcolonial theory, and globalisation
- Parafiction
Conferences
- Session Co-convenor, Viral Images: Art and Contagion. 2022 Annual Conference, Association for Art History.
- ‘Contagious Bodies: Epidemic Imaginaries and the Making of Queer Kinship in the Works of Candice Lin and Jes Fan,’ Princeton Art & Archaeology Graduate Symposium. 2022.
- ‘Performing a Viral Future: Immune Ecologies, Animacies, and the Making of the Microbial Body in Pei-Ying Lin’s Virophilia (2018-ongoing).’ Embodying Local Knowledges Critical Ecologies Symposium. Organised by Wanwu Group (City University of Hong Kong) and Taipei National University of the Arts. 13 November 2021.
- Panel co-convenor. Japanese Art in the Ecological Predicament: Collaborations in the Age of Crisis. EAJS conference, Ghent, 25-28 August 2021.
- ‘Performing a Viral Future: The Making of the Microbial Body and the Situated Knowledges of Virus in Pei-Ying Lin’s Virophilia (2018-ongoing)’, Rethinking Human-Nonhuman Entanglements Online Workshop, 27 March 2021.
- ‘Palaeontology of the Present: “The Roots of Life” in Li Shan’s Genetic Art’, Third Year PhD Symposium (The Courtauld Institute of Art), October 2020
- ‘Doubting Sex: Examining the Biomedical Gaze in Lu Yang’s UterusMan (2013)’, Dimensions of the Modern: Exploring Critical Approaches (The Courtauld Institute of Art), June 2019
- Co-organiser, ‘Wording Art History: Negotiating the Global and the Local’, Modern and Contemporary Postgraduate Colloquium at The Courtauld Institute of Art, 17 March 2018
- ‘With or without nature?- Ecological criticism in Wen-ying Tsai’s Cybernetic sculpture system’, 2018 EACS conference, University of Glasgow
Other Academic Activities
- Editorial Board, immediations, the peer-reviewed postgraduate journal of the Courtauld Institute of Art, 2019
- Research Assistant to Dr Wenny Teo, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art