Lumi Tan curated Anicka Yi's first institutional solo exhibition You Can Call Me F at The Kitchen in New York in 2015. Tan launches our 9th year-long research season with a new lecture on Yi, focusing on how Yi's evocative use of language affords a better understanding of temporalities, materials, and ecological systems and how she pursues language as a mutable tool to build empathy between practitioners in different disciplines. By emphasizing a pursuit of the communicative abilities of non-verbal language within her work, Yi’s collaborative linguistic vocabulary does not seek to define terms but continually pries them open.

Lumi Tan is a curator and writer based in New York. She is currently Curatorial Director of Luna Luna, an art amusement park conceived by artist André Heller in 1987. She was previously Senior Curator at The Kitchen, New York and has also held positions at the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Nord Pas-de-Calais, France; Zach Feuer Gallery, New York; and MoMA/P.S.1, New York. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, Mousse, Cura, and numerous exhibition catalogues. She was the recipient of 2020 VIA Art Fund Curatorial Fellowship.

This is the first event in our year-long season dedicated to thinking about our contemporary moment through the lens of Anicka Yi's work.