BA, MA University of London; PhD New York University

Yeewan Koon is associate professor and Chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Hong Kong. She has published numerous works including Nara Yoshitomo (2020), “A Chinese Canton? Painting the Local in Export Art (2019) and A Defiant Brush: Su Renshan and the Politics of Painting in 19th Century Guangdong (2014). She is the recipient of several research awards including a Fulbright Senior Fellowship, American Council of Learned Scholars, and visiting scholarships at Cambridge University and Columbia University. Koon also works in the contemporary art field as a critic and curator. In 2014, she was guest curator of It Begins with Metamorphosis: Xu Bing at the Asia Society, Hong Kong Centre, and was one of the selected curators for the 12th Gwangju Biennale, 2018. In June 2021, she curated the exhibition So long, thanks again for the fish!, which was part of the Inspired Programme of inaugural Helsinki Biennale in Finland. This year she was also awarded the prestigious UGC Teacher Award.

Selected Publications

Yoshitomo Nara. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2020.

A Defiant Brush: Su Renshan and the Politics of Painting in 19th Century Guangdong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014.

It Begins with Metamorphosis: Xu Bing. Hong Kong: Asia Society Hong Kong Center, 2014.

“A Chinese Canton? Painting the Local in Export Art.” In Eighteenth-century Art Worlds: Global and Local Geographies of Art, edited by Michael Yonan and Stacey Sloboda, 71-94. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019.

“Faultlines.” In 12th Gwangju Biennale 2018: Imagined Borders, edited by Gwangju Biennale editorial committee. Gwangju, Republic of Korea: Gwangju Biennale Foundation, 2018.

“The Artist Behind the Camera: Yoshitomo Nara.” In Once in a Life: Encounters with Nara, edited by Dominique Chan and Fumio Nanjo, 83-117. Hong Kong: Asia Society Hong Kong Center, 2016.

Awards

2021 UGC Teaching Award (General Faculty Members) (read more)

2020 Teaching Excellence Award: Outstanding Teaching Award (individual award) (read more)

Faculty Knowledge Exchange Award 2020 (read more)

Fulbright-RGC Hong Kong Senior Research Scholar Awards 2018/2019 (read more)

Other Activities

Hong Kong Art Timeline (2021) (read more)

Curator of the exhibition “So long, thanks again for the fish” at Levyhalli, Suomenlinna (2021) (read more) (360 tour)

Selected curator for the co-curated exhibition “Faultlines,” at 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018) (read more)

Guest curator of the exhibition “It Begins with Metamorphosis: Xu Bing“ at the Asia Society, Hong Kong Center (2014) (read more)