Scholar

Simon Leung

Professor of Art at UC Irvine
Simon Leung was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Making Time at Human Resources Conference at the Arts Research Center on February 22, 2012.

Simon Leung’s foremost concern as an artist is how “the ethical,” broadly defined, can be thought and traced. His projects, in various media, include a rethinking of AIDS and otherness using the figures of the pinprick and the glory hole; meditations on “the residual space of the American/Vietnam War” (comprising works on the squatting body as counter-architecture, military desertion as askesis, and surfing); a video essay...

André Lepecki

Professor of Performance Studies at New York University and Associate Dean in the Center for Research and Study at the Tisch School of the Arts
André Lepecki was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Living Time Symposium at the Arts Research Center on February 20, 2014.

André Lepecki works and researches at the intersection of critical dance studies, curatorial practice, performance theory, contemporary dance and visual arts performance. Selected curatorial work includes Chief Curator of the festival IN TRANSIT (2008 and 2009 editions) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Co-curator of the archive Dance and Visual Arts since 1960s for the exhibition MOVE: choreographing you, Hayward Gallery (2010)....

Raina J. León

Poet, Writer, and Former Professor of Education at Saint Mary’s College of California
Raina J. León gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the...

Việt Lê

Artist, Writer, Chair of Graduate Visual and Critical Studies Program and an Associate Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at California College of the Arts
Việt Lê gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series.

Việt Lê is an artist, writer, and curator whose work over the past twenty years examines spiritualities, trauma, representation and sexualities with a focus on Southeast Asia and its diasporas, as well as intersectional coalitions. Dr. Lê is the author of Return Engagements: Contemporary Art’s Traumas of Modernity and History in...

Anneka Lenssen

2019 ARC Fellow
Anneka Lenssen was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2019 - she was chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.

Anneka Lenssen specializes in modern painting and contemporary visual practices, with a focus on the cultural politics of the Middle East. Her research examines problems of artistic representation in relation to the globalizing imaginaries of empire, nationalism, communism, decolonization, and Third World humanism.

She is the author of Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (UC Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Syrian Studies Association Best Book...

Thomas Jean Lax

Writer and Curator in the Department of Media and Performance at MoMA
Thomas Jean Lax was a Visiting Curator/Moderator at the Visual Activism Conference at the Arts Research Center on November 12, 2020.

Thomas Jean Lax is a curator and writer specializing in black art, queer study and performance. At the Museum of Modern Art, they organized the exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces (2022) about the gallery, founded by ...

Grace Lavery

ARC Fellow, Associate Professor of English Critical Theory and Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley
Grace Lavery was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2016 – she was chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.

Grace Lavery is a writer, editor, and academic living in Brooklyn, NY. As an Associate Professor of English, Critical Theory, and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her research explores the history and theory of aesthetics and interpretation, with particular interests in psychoanalysis, literary realism, and queer and trans cultures. Her...

Fernando Luiz Lara

Architect, Author, and Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman School of Design
Fernando Luiz Lara gave a Visiting Scholar Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 9, 2018.

Fernando Luiz Lara works on theorizing spaces of the Americas with an emphasis on the dissemination of design ideas beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries. Framed by decolonial theories, Lara has written widely about issues that pertain to the built environment of our continent.

His latest publications include Street Matters: A Critical History of 20th Century...

Stan Lai

Playwright and Theater Director
Stan Lai was the Artist-in-Residence at the Arts Research Center from 2012-2013.

One of the most celebrated voices in the contemporary Chinese theatre, Stan Lai has been called "The best Chinese language playwright and director in the world." (BBC) "The preeminent Chinese playwright and stage director of this generation." (China Daily) "Asia's top theatre director." (Asiaweek) "The most celebrated Chinese language playwright and director in the world and his body of work - which to date includes over 35 original plays - has redefined how we think about...

Tony Labat

Multimedia Artist, Installation Artist, and Former Professor in the Department of Performance and Video at the San Francisco Art Institute
Tony Labat was a Visiting Artist Panel Participant at the Curating People Symposium at the Arts Research Center on April 28, 2011.

With ironic wit and incisive social critique, Tony Labat's provocative, nonlinear narrative collages confront cultural identity, loss and displacement. Adopting an irreverent, often subversive stance, Labat represents the experience of difference and marginalization from the mediated position of the "outsider," and deconstructs the codes by which the mass media reinforces cultural mythologies. In his idiosyncratic pastiches of performance,...