Sort By:

Middelheim Museum, Antwerp Exhibition, 2021

Time. And Again., is the title of the exhibition of 5 billboard scaled works presented along the Scheldt River promenade of Antwerp, Belgium. The exhibition theme is work in relation to time during pandemic days.

Enemy, 1979

Installation comprised of two long walls facing one another, one in red with the word “Enemy” and one in blue with outline of man in front of a lectern. Work was made in 1979

Screenplays, 2020

I teach a seminar course at Penn titled “The Chinese Body and Spatial Production in Chinatown.” The course recalls for me a long held idea I have had for a screenplay. I have never before written a screenplay and was unaware of screenwriting software until I had completed my script. The original script was 276 […]

Shopkeeper Series, 2001

Collection Includes: Shirley’s Bakery Paul’s Auto Repair Superior Drapery Sandhu’s Maple Leaf Parvi Fresh Meat & Poultry McGill & Son Ebony Eyes Amir New and Used Leonida Pizzeria Kim Mart Taj Kabab Bauer Sausage Mondo Nudo Grace Chung Financial Michael Hassan: Leaving Law Danny’s Shoe Re-Nu Installation view Superior Drapery Jim & Susan’s Motel Maple […]

13 Tragic Philadelphians, 2015

Collection includes: Kathy Chang(e) Birdie Africa Nancy Spungen Joey Stefano Gia Carangi Billie Holiday Tyrone Everett Jim Croce Blenda Gay Jessica Savitch Adam Goldstein (DJ AM) Lee Morgan Mario Lanza

Portrait-Logo Series, 1989

Collection includes: Gillian & Smokey Pete Norris Could Use a Drink Miss Vancouver Bindy Sangeet: Employee of the Month Melly Shum Hates Her Job Garbage Pickers We are Sacred Blade Nancy Nishi, Joe Ping Chau: Real Estate Ask for Larry Myers A Woodcutter and His Wife 1989 Alex Gonzalez Loves his Mother and Father Here […]

Books, 2019

Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life 1991 – 2018 is 340 pages in length and is absent of several key essays I wrote because I could not locate them among old cd-roms. They have since been found, but too late for publication. The book has a diversity of essays but all linked by […]

Furniture Sculptures (1978 to present), 2017

Sculpture for Dreamhome (1980) My Arms are Ready to Embrace the Universe with Love (Four pulled out hide-a-beds) 1983 Red Circle (1986) Mirror Corner with Cushions (1985 Cushion dinghy (1987) Sculpture for living room/public lounge (1978) Partially buried sofa (1984) Tower of Love(seats) (1987) Untitled Furniture Sculpture Line (1986) Orange Sculpture in figure 8 Untitled […]

The Retired Plough Horse and the Last Pulled Log, 2020

This was a successfully completed proposal for the Kings Crossing development in a suburb of Vancouver, BC. It is sited on a prominent corner along the primary route for the transportation of agricultural and other resource goods from the hinterland areas to the city of Vancouver. The sculpture proposed is of an old draught horse […]

Melly Shum Hates Her Job, 1990

I had the honour of being the inaugural exhibitor at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam when it opened its doors in 1990. The exhibition was a survey of my furniture sculptures, language paintings, and photo-text works. One of the latter works included was Melly Shum Hates Her Job (1989). Represented […]

World Portrait Series, 1985

As part of World Portrait series comprised of seven canvasses, Ken Lum’s Skateboarder (for example) combines and holds in tension two contrary artistic impulses.  The white monochromes signal an endpoint to painting as an uninflected surface that refuses all reference and representation to arrive at a condition of pure painting.  The small black and white pictures punctuate the […]

Pi, 2006

Pi deals with the subject of statistics referring to the world with numerical information. Numerous mirrored panels are fixed to the side of walls in the 180 meter long Karlsplatz passageway in downtown Vienna, each furnished with a piece of etched writing. LED displays are mounted under each of these headlines. Based on statistical data […]

The River Between Us: Homer Plessy and Dred Scott, 2013

This is a permanent work installed in the fall of 2013 in both the cities of St. Louis, Missouri and New Orleans, Louisiana. The River Between Us: Homer Plessy and Dred Scott comprises of busts two important 19th century civil rights martyrs that became cause celbres in their respective home cities. The actions of Plessy […]

Strip mall series, 2009

Collection includes: Drake Plaza 117 Dwight Eisenhower BLVD Plaza 88 International Food Center Midway Shopping Plaza Norgate Shopping Center Kings Mall

The Buffalo and the Buffalo Fur Trader, 2016

This work has been sitting in an outdoor storage in Edmonton since 2016. It was originally commissioned by the City of Edmonton vis a vis the Edmonton Arts Council (EAC) and intended to be sited on both ends of the pedestrian passerelle adjoining the New Walterdale Bridge. The city has expressed worry that First Nations […]

Colour Chart Series (2012), 2012

Collection includes: The Twelve Steps To Recovery From Alcoholism From Infancy to Late Adulthood The Paths Between Rejection, Fear, Comfort And, Acceptance From Anger to Forgiveness From Monday to Friday Pie Chart Series Maze Series

Monument to East Vancouver, 2010

Monument to East Vancouver develops from a graffiti symbol that has circulated for several decades in East Vancouver. Over the years, the symbol has been adopted as an emblem for East Vancouver as a whole, but its appearance has generally been tentative rather than overt. The lack of overtness is, I feel, symptomatic of the […]

CCA Kitakyushu Exhibition: I Wish I Had More Friends, 2001

2001 Exhibition at Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu, Japan. The exhibition featured common Japanese publicity and advertising lettering along with cartoon figures that featured texts from despondent voices.

An Homage to Buontalenti., 2011

I did not win this context for a development located next to a well known and historical live action and musical theatre. A facing wall of the neighboring theatre forms the eastern side of the plaza with its set back building development. My idea for the plaza for the Theatre Park development is playful yet […]

Coming Soon, 2009

Arrow Factory Gallery, Beijing and reshown in Vienna

Memorial to the Battle of Ortona: Peace through Valour, 2016

Inaugurated in mid 2016, a sculpture commemorating more than 93,000 Canadians who fought in the Italian Campaign of World War II—an often overlooked but vital part of Europe’s fight for liberation from Nazi Germany—was unveiled beside Toronto City Hall. The battle referenced in the artwork occurred at Christmastime in 1943, when the Canadian Forces in the […]

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, 2001

This is a permanent public work sited in the information room (or library) of the National Museum of Ethnology (Museum Volkenkunde) in Leiden, The Netherlands on the occasion of the museum’s sesquicentennial.  The work references Jules Virey, a French anthropologist highly popular at the time of the founding of the museum who argued that human […]

I-70 Installation: Hatton, Missouri, 2015

Lum created a new work for the Sign Show by merging existing pieces — “Bindy Sangeet: Employee of the Month” (1990) and “Alia Naffouj: Hooked on Tennis” (1998) — into a diptych. Within the context of message themes along the interstate, his billboard comments on labor, immigration, the American Dream, and comparative representations of aspirant […]

Portrait-Repeated Text Series, 1993

Collection includes: You Don’t Love Me Rebecca Rosenberg Sings Bye Bye Blackbird Onions Eggs Milk That’s it, You’re in Pain Idiot Hello. How are you? I Like Myself the Way I Am What is it Daddy? Hum Hum Hummm That’s Not Funny You’re Not Ugly I Can’t Believe I’m in Paris I’m So Sorry Give […]

Walk Piece, 1978

Performance at Simon Fraser University lasting 8 AM to 5 PM non-stop, bracketing the typical academic day.  The performance takes place at a site visible from many different vantage points, owing to SFU’s myriad of elevated walkways.  By walking back and forth, I hoped to embody the actions of a swinging pendulum to a clock. […]

A Circle within a Square; A Square within a Circle, 2011

This is a work realized with Zheng Shengtian for the Moscow Biennale. Within the cylindrical pavilion, one enters a square room in which a circular facial mirror is installed. Within the cubic pavilion (which is joined to the cylindrical pavilion by the common step), one enters a circular room in which a square facial mirror […]

January 1, 1960, 2011

this work comprises a topographically political map of the world as it existed on January 1, 1960. This globe is designed for the foyer of a large community centr in Utrecht built to address a lack of community facilities in an area of high immigrant youth crime. The youths are teh children of immigrants who […]

Thinking Simon, 2015

Bronze statue of noted British Columbia explorer Simon Fraser.  This is a commission for a new Vancouver development on the banks of the mouth of the Fraser river.  The status of Fraser shows him in advanced age and sitting atop a tree stump in Rodin’s The Thinker pose.

Across Time and Space, Two Children of Toronto Meet, 2013

This is a commission for a commercial realty development in Toronto, Ontario. The site is directly behind City Hall and involves a long corridor (passageway) from Bay Street to City Hall. Two bronze sculptures to be placed on either end of this corrdior signaling historical immigrants to this area in teh form of two children […]

Four Boats Stranded: Red and Yellow, Black and White, 2000

Taking into account several important attributes of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s site, this work serves as a direcitonal geographical and historical marker. The four installed boats include scaled down versions of a First Nations Longboat, Camptain Vancouver’s ship, the Komagata Maru (the infamous 1914 Indian immigrant ship) and a cargo ship that recently carried migrants […]