born 1956, Vancouver, Canada | lives and works Vancouver, Canada

Ken Lum works in a number of media including painting, sculpture and photography, his art is conceptually oriented, and generally concerned with issues of identity in relation to the categories of language and portraiture. Lum won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999. He was awarded the Killam Award for Outstanding Research in 1998 and a Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award in 2007. He represented Canada at the Sydney Biennale in 1995, the São Paulo Art Biennale in 1997, the Shanghai Biennale in 2000 and at Documenta XI in 2002. Lum has worked on several public art projects as well. In Vienna in 2000 Lum realized a 540 square metre work “There is no place like home”, in 2010 completed Monument for East Vancouver, a permanent outdoor artwork located in the traditionally working class side of Vancouver.

Why do you create art?
I create art because I believed it is the only area of true escape from the systematized and defined world, although in recent years, I have developed great doubts about I still believe this.

What do contemporary people need art for?
Contemporary people have no time for anything except going about what they are doing without challenging why the way things are. Contemporary people generally know nothing about contemporary art and many are resentful of artists. Which is why they need contemporary art because contemporary art is about mindset. It may not make a person happier to have a wider field of vision. Indeed, it may have the opposite effect, but contemporary art does make the understanding of self and the experience of life deeper and more complete.