Ken Lum was born in 1956, Vancouver, where he still resides, is one of Canada's leading international artists. Comprised of multiple forms, Lum's art is centrally concerned with issues of identity as it traverses the discourses of urban image production. More recently, he has concentrated on large public art commissions. He exhibited in Documenta XI and numerous biennales. Lum is an active writer who has published in many leading art journals and magazines. From 1999 to 2001, Lum wrote an online journal for LondonArt. Later he co-founded the Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art in 2000 and edited it until 2004. In 2005, Lum co-curated “Shanghai Modern 1919-1945”, an exhibition about the city's art and culture during the republican era. Also in 2005, Lum co-curated the 7th Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates, the largest art biennial in the Middle East.
House of Realization
”House of Realization” is an architectural installation consisting of a darkened chamber enveloped by three corridors. The first corridor is comprised of a mirror reflecting a thirteenth century Turkish poem from the Sufi poet Yunus Emre. Printed backwards on the wall facing the mirror, the poem deals with the relationship between subjectivity and the world as experienced by the body. Two corridors follow. At the end of each is a full-length mirror. At every moment, visitors are confronted with a reflection of their body. At the end of the final corridor is the entrance to a darkened chamber. It is here where visitors are presented with both the Turkish text on the wall and those in the midst of reading the text on the mirrored surface. These visitors are unaware of their visibility to those located on the other side of the mirror. It is only after walking the length of the three corridors and entering the darkened chamber that visitors realize that they have been witnessed by another.
 |
 |
 |