Ken Lum

You Can’t See Me

Ken Lum is known for his conceptual and representational art in a number of media, including painting, sculpture and photography. A longtime professor, he currently is the Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design in Philadelphia. 

Lum’s public art often deals with individual and social identity formation in the context of historical trauma and the complications of official and non-official memory.  Since the mid 1990s, Lum has worked on numerous permanent public art commissions including for the cities of Vienna, the Engadines (Switzerland), Rotterdam, St. Louis, Leiden, Utrecht, Toronto and Vancouver. He has also realized temporary public art commissions in Stockholm, Istanbul, Torun (Poland), Innsbruck and Kansas City.  He is currently working on a memorial to the 1986 Lake Nyos disaster for the Government of Cameroon.