Ken Lum
[13] In 2015, Lum was awarded an Honoris Causa Doctorate degree from Simon Fraser University, his undergraduate alma mater.
In 2024, Lum was conferred a King Charles III Coronation Medal by David Eby, the premier of British Columbia, Canada.
[23] As the Scotiabank Photographer Award winner for 2023, Lum was conferred a solo exhibition at The Image Centre in Toronto in 2024, he was also subject of a published book distributed worldwide by Steidl.
In 2010, he was a part of the advisory committee for the Canada Council dedicated to international engagement and acted as a juror for the City of Vancouver exhibitions assistance awards.
In 2011, he served as a juror for the Brink Award in (Seattle) focusing on emerging artists from (British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon).
In 2019, Lum participated as a juror for the 9.4 billion USD King Salman Park project in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Later that year, he delivered the keynote address for the "Becoming Public Art" conference in Markham, Ontario, conducted virtually due to the pandemic.
In 2022, Lum was the keynote speaker at the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics conference hosted by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
His other writings include a historical analysis of Canadian cultural policy [33] and a paper presented to the Department of Caribbean Studies at Yale University, which explored multiple identities as depicted in Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa.
The book and catalog for the exhibition and project "Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia" was issued in the fall of 2019 by Temple University Press.
In 2023, he wrote an essay for the catalog for Brenda Draney's exhibition at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto.
[38][circular reference] The synopsis for The Cook is: In 1865, three years after the end of the Civil War, the Union of the Nation was preserved, and the institution of slavery was formally abolished.
In the wake of these changes, railway and mining companies have turned to importing indentured Chinese laborers, often referred to as "coolies," to the United States as a replacement for the newly freed African American slaves.
The story revolves around nine crucial days in the life of Chung, a teenage boy from southern China, who is hired to cook for Joel's unit.
Chung quickly gains a reputation for his culinary skills, but his newfound success attracts the attention of a rival hauling company, leading to his kidnapping.
It is based on actual events that unfolded during a time marked by intense anti-Chinese sentiments, especially among white unionized workers.
It follows the community's journey as they face the looming expulsion date set by the Mayor of Tacoma, which demanded the removal of all Chinese residents.
In 2001, Lum was part of a team that founded a Humanities 101 educational lectures program for low-income people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Lum was an advisor for The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945 to 1994, a 2001 exhibition conceived and curated by Okwui Enwezor.
In Vienna in 2000, Lum realized a 540 square meter work on the side of the centrally located Kunsthalle Wien for the non-profit art initiative museum in progress.
Each vessel has been placed at one of the building's compass points—north, south, east, and west—and painted in a color intended to reflect the stereotyped racial vision presented in the hymn "Jesus Loves the Little Children.
The work titled Il Buolf Mus-chin Museum was a commission of the Walter A. Bechtler Foundation of Zurich and the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.
Titled Pi,[46] the work is over 130 meter long and situated in a prominent pedestrian passageway by Vienna's Karlsplatz subway interchange.
The work is located in the Nieuw Welgelegen district,[47] a troubled but dynamic multi-ethnic area of Utrecht that is undergoing redevelopment.
The work titled January 1, 1960 consists of a monumentally scaled topographical and political globe of the world as it looked at the start of 1960.
Scale models of these structures appear to float over the surface of a corporate reflecting pond, creating a marked juxtaposition between their makeshift construction and the surrounding architecture while evoking the utopian character of the mudflat community in the seemingly inexorable advance of urban development.
Late in 2010, Lum was selected as the lead artist on the design team for the new Walterdale Bridge replacement scheduled for construction from 2013 to 2017 in Edmonton, Alberta.
Lum completed in 2013 public art commissions premised on the tragic-historical figures of Homer Plessy and Dred Scott as a connecting narrative between the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St Louis, Missouri and Longue Vue House and Gardens[50] in New Orleans, Louisiana.
