JJ Chan

At Kingston School of Art, I teach Undergraduate Fine Art and Art History students in Level 5, and Supervise PhD Researchers in the Centre for Practice Research in the Arts. 

I am interested in participating in communities built on collaborative and non-hierarchical teaching and learning relationships that allow us to co-create active knowledges that can  confront the urgent challenges pushing against the cultures of tomorrow. As an educator, my goal is to build resilient communities of critical and creative thinkers. These radical artistic communities hold at their core the values of academic research; that of the urgency of new discovery and its contribution to the future of knowledge. In order to facilitate this, I actively seek a change in the culture of the University that allows us to discover new curricula, methods, and approaches that are fit for the 21st century.

I invite proposals from prospective contemporary art practice based PhD researchers on critical matters of race, gender, and sex across any disciplinary practices, particularly projects which concern identity, portraitures and their futures. I am keen to support projects which sit beyond the established spaces of contemporary art; such as the gallery, museum and the studio, and that are seeking a temporary home for period of dedicated research.

Qualifications and expertise

• PGCert Art and Design Education

Undergraduate courses taught

• Fine Art BA (Hons)
• Fine Art & Art History BA (Hons)

As an artist, my work (re)searches for alternatives ways of being and of seeing.

My work is often encountered in the form of a provocation. My work is often temporary, yet I care more about tomorrow than I do about today.

My work comes in many forms and disguises; it operates in different contexts and situations.

I am adaptable.

I approach all my work as art-work.

At the foundations of my practice is an investigation of portraiture and self-portraiture that seeks to discover new cartographies of gender, identity, and collecting. Somewhere between the authentic and imaginary, I aim to discover new forms of representation and storytelling; and to work towards the discovery of a new kind of imag(in)ing. Through praxis-based enquiry, practice-as-(re)searching, and collaborative modes of working, my work contributes to artistic enquiries on race and gender, identity and portraiture, and to education and future studies. In all of this work, I give emphasis to questions of materiality, embodiment, and sensuality.

I am a co-lead of the Material:Pedagogy:Future Research Network based between Kingston University, Bath Spa University, and UAL which seeks to critique and develop understanding around the function of the present-day art school in relation to broader emerging social, cultural and economic ecosystems of the future. I collaborate with colleagues across institutions and disciplinary schools to work towards our collective concerns. Ongoing collaborations include projects with co-conspirators based at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge (UK); Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (AT).

Along with students, staff and alumni from art departments at Kingston, Goldsmiths, and Manchester Metropolitan universities, I am a member of the collective A Particular Reality, which works between our institutions to give space, time, and resources to understand the experiences of those marginalised by these organisations because of race and ethnicity. This initiative invites co-researchers across all academic levels to participate in thinking through together the Particular Realities of the academic arena as experienced by People of Colour.

Areas of specialism

• Visual Art and the Future
• Contemporary and Future Portraitures
• Art and the Public Sphere
• New Materialisms and Emerging Methodologies
• Artistic Pedagogies

Publications