Paul Chan is an artist, writer, and publisher who lives in New York. “Breathers”, a travelling survey exhibition of his recent practice organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, was mounted in 2022-2024. His work has been featured in many international group exhibitions, such as Documenta 13, the 53rd Venice Biennale, and the 2006 Whitney Biennial. In 2007, Chan collaborated with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and the New York based public art group Creative Time to produce a site-specific outdoor presentation of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in New Orleans two years after Hurricane Katrina. Chan founded Badlands Unlimited (2010-2018), a press devoted to publishing artist writings and writings about art in paper and digital forms. Badlands authors include Marcel Duchamp, Yvonne Rainer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Craig Owens, Carroll Dunham, Lynne Tillman, Martine Syms, Dread Scott, Aruna D’Souza, among many others. Chan is the winner of the Hugo Boss Prize in 2014, a biennial award honoring artists who have made a visionary contribution to contemporary art. He was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2022.
Paul Chan
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”