Ken Lum Example

1.       Describe the piece.

On the left, there is a woman smiling in her workplace and on the right there is a bold text saying ‘MELLY SHUM HATES HER JOB’. Since the ‘HATES’ word is emphasized with vivid colour and spiky outline, the word is overlapping with the smile of the woman when one looks at the piece.

2.       What do you think Ken Lum is trying to communicate?

Ken Lum is trying to communicate that people tend to judge or get deceived by the text, and in a larger scale, media controls people to be biased. He depicts the victims caused by media through this piece.

3.       How does it explore, race, culture, language, class and/or identity?

It explores identity of how people judge others by 'few words' and the prejudice of how working class people would hate jobs.

4.       Define conceptualism, how is this work a conceptual piece?

Conceptualism is the theory that universals can be said to exist, but only as concepts in the mind.  This work is a conceptual piece because it explores the concept in the art piece and tries to give message to the world by this work.