Kyunghee Pyun, professor of History of Art, participated in an international symposium held at the University of Edinburgh in conjunction with the exhibition A Blast of Lyricism on display in London’s Frieze No. 9 Cork Street from October 30 to November 15, 2025.
Pyun’s paper titled “Lee Mingwei’s Critique of Heritage and Memory: Subverting Essentialism of Styles” was part of the symposium called A Blast of Lyricism: Contemporary Taiwanese Art and Its Global Connections organized by Professor Chia-ling Yang at the University of Edinburgh on November 3 and 4. In this lecture, Pyun argued that Lee Mingwei’s projects, such as the Mending Project (from 2009), intertwine references to the Eurocentric modernist traditions with his subversive, sophisticated criticism of a center-periphery model of art historical narratives.
Her discussion revealed that partial ignorance of “curatorial episteme” sustains the hierarchies of knowledge by positioning transnational artists like Lee Mingwei in the group of non-Western, exotic, or indigenous art making. This paper will be part of an upcoming volume on contemporary Taiwanese art by Manchester University Press. Pyun’s previous publications include her 2022 book American Art in Asia: Artistic Praxis and Theoretical Divergence.