Join Asha Iman Veal (MoCP) and Kalen Wing-Ki Lee (Hong Kong Baptist University) for a curatorial conversation on exhibitions about love and community. Moderated by art historian Jennifer Dorothy Lee, PhD 李晉美 (SAIC).

Kalen Wing Ki Lee recently curated LOVE+: Awakening. Lee is Associate Dean at the School of Creative Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University, and Associate Professor in Photography in the Academy of Visual Arts.

Asha Iman Veal curated LOVE: Still Not the Lesser, on view at MoCP through December 22, 2023. She is MoCP’s Associate Curator.

Longer guest bios:

LEE Wing Ki is an artist-researcher born and based in Hong Kong. He read history of art at the University of Hong Kong and received postgraduate training in documentary photography and photojournalism at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, supported by a British Chevening Scholarship. In 2020 and 2021, he is awarded Lee Hysan Foundation-Asian Cultural Council Fellowships and conducts research in arts and technology in the US.

Lee’s works have been exhibited in Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Latvia, US, the UK and many others. His documentary photography project, titled Tsang’s Odyssey, is a finalist of the WMA Master Award (Mobility) in 2016-17. Whereas Faded, a conceptual image installation, is selected in KG+ SELECT, Kyotographie in 2019; and Katharsis, a photo-installation, is showcased at the satellite exhibition, Hong Kong International Photo Festival 2021.

Lee is an occasional curator and a writer. His curatorial projects include LOVE+: Awakening (for Gay Games HK 2023), Exile to the Red Planet by Caleb Fung, Unfolding Hong Kong: Photobooks Collection from Lumenvisum, Landing on the East by Yuen Nga Chi and Tang Kwong San and many others. His scholarly writings appear in Trans Asia Photography and edited volume published by Amsterdam University Press, Brill and Routledge; also in Chinese Photography and Voices of Photography in Chinese.

Lee is currently the Acting Director-Associate Professor in Photography at the Academy of Visual Arts and an Associate Dean (Research) at the School of Creative Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University.

Jennifer Dorothy Lee 李晉美, Associate Professor of East Asian art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, studies creative practices in modern and contemporary China. Her research and teaching encompass social history, aesthetic theory, and transnational perspectives. Trained in comparative literature, Lee brings literary frames and methodologies to her work on visual and material objects. In addition to China-related topics, Lee’s research extends to histories of social movement in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Lee’s first book, Anxiety Aesthetics: Maoist Legacies in China, 1978–1985, will be out in early 2024 (Cal Press). Anxiety Aesthetics offers a sustained study of aesthetic theory, art, and subjectivity redefined in the fleeting historical moment bridging the Mao era with Dengist reforms. Lee’s next research project, Diasporic Longing, will take up personal and social histories of art as well as the dynamics of Cold War international diplomacy among Sinospheric subjects in the mid-twentieth century.

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Tags: Asha Iman Veal, Chicago, Curating LOVE, Jennifer Dorothy Lee, Kalen Wing-Ki Lee, Loop, Museum of Contemporary Photography