Academic Staff
Dr. MAK Kathy Yim King
Assistant Professor
Modern and contemporary Chinese art
- HJ625
- +852 3400 8938
- kathy.mak@polyu.edu.hk
ORCID IDBiography
Dr. Kathy Mak is an art historian specializing in the global making of Chinese art in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan after the Second World War. Her current book project, The New Look of Mountains and Rivers: Landscape and the Environmental Imagination of Socialist China (1949–1976), investigates the representation of “socialist landscape” across different visual media in the context of the building of New China after 1949. Special attention is being paid to its role to reshape the public conception of the relationship between humans and their natural environments in Mao’s China. In the meantime, she also examines the art of Hong Kong during the 1960s-1970s, especially on the question of cross-mediality between sculpture, printmaking, and mural in the contexts of global decolonialism and modernism during the Cold War.
Education and Academic Qualifications
- Ph.D. in Art History, University of California, Los Angeles
- M.Phil. in History of Chinese Art, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- B.A. in Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Academic and Professional Experience
- Postdoctoral Fellow, the Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University (2018–2019)
- Fellow, the Museum Network Fellowship at National Museum of Korea (Summer 2015)
- Research Fellow, UCLA-LACMA Art History Practicum Initiatives, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Summer 2014)
Research Interests
Research Output
- The New Look of Mountains and Rivers: Landscape and the Environmental Imagination of Socialist China (1949–1976) [under preparation]
- “Grounding the Global: Pathways to Elucidating Tensions in Chinese Contemporary Art,” ARTMargins (MIT Press Journal) no. 12.1 (February 2023) [Forthcoming].
- “The Global in Question: Physicality and the Left-wing Internationalism in This Land So Rich in Beauty (1959).” [under preparation]
- “High Mountains and Long Rivers: Effect and Affect in Yi Sang-beom’s Field at Dawn (1966–1967).” In NMK 2015 Museum Network Fellowship Research Papers, edited by National Museum of Korea, 236-250. Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2015.
- “Lin Xue: The Writing of Painting and the Spiritual Condition.” In Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past, 208-212. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2012.
- “Chen Guan (1563-c.1639): Walking with a Staff over a Stream Bridge,” “Sun Zhi (act. late sixteenth-early seventeenth century: Landscape,” and “Zhang Feng (d. 1662): Immortals’ Secrets in a Stone Cave (1658).” In The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China, edited by Peter C. Sturman and Susan S. Tai, 122-123, 124-125, and 196-199. Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2012.
- “The New Look of Mountains and Rivers: Landscape and the Environmental Imagination in Socialist China (1949-1976)” (ID: P0033567), Start-up Fund for New Recruits, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
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“The In-Between: Printmaking and Cross-Mediality in Hong Kong Art (1960s–1970s)” (ID: P0037917), Early Career Scheme, University Grants Committee, The Hong Kong Government.
- “Reimagining There: Locality and the Relocatees’ Affective Affinity of the Chinese Great Wall in Post-1949 Taiwan’s Landscape Painting,” at Border as Method: Art Historical Interventions, 35th CIHA World Congress – Motion: Migrations, São Paulo, Brazil (January 17–21, 2022).
- “The Monumental Landscape: Dam Construction and the Re-articulation of Human-Nature Relationship in Socialist Chinese Art (1949–1965),” at The 12th East Asia Forum on Humanities, “Paradigm Shift: Interaction and Integration among East Asian Cultures,” held at the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan (November 19–22, 2020).
- “Reimaging Landscape: Water Control and the Ecotopia in Song Wenzhi’s Painting,” at the international conference, Uses and Representations of the Environment in the Chinese World, organized by the Association Française d’ Études Chinoises (AFEC), at Inalco University, Paris, France (October 16–17, 2020).
- “When Viewing Takes Time: Painting, Monument, and Memory in Cold War China and Taiwan,” at the panel, Locality and Memory in East Asian Art, organized and chaired by myself at the College Art Association’s (CAA) 108th Annual Conference, Chicago (February 22, 2020).
- “Research Methodology and Ideology in the Study of Fu Baoshi’s (1904–1965) Landscape Painting of the 1950s and the 1960s,” at Images and Codes: The Problem of Reading Art, The Graduate Student Symposium in East Asian Art, Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University (February, 2016).
- “Format, Images and Affect in Gong Xian’s (1618–1689) Landscape in the Manner of Dong Yuan (17th century),” at The Mellon Chinese Object Study Workshop Conference, at The Smithsonian Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art, Washington D.C. (November, 2014).
- “Spatial Politics in Kacey Wong’s (b. 1970) Drift City (since 2000),” at The 59th Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs (MCAA), The East Asian Studies Center, The Ohio State University (October, 2010).
- “The Aesthetics of Demolition in Zhang Dali’s (b. 1963) Dialogue/and Demolition (1993–2002),” at Urban Society: Challenges for the Present and Future, The 2nd International Congress on Chinese Studies (ICCS). Organizer: Centro de Estudios Chinos Lu Xun, Bilbao, Spain. Host: The East China Normal University, Shanghai (June, 2010).
- “‘Fruitful Sites’: Mountain and the Artistic Portrayal of Its Political Economy in Mao’s China,” at Majestic Vistas Online Lecture Series, organized by the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (November 7, 2022). [Forthcoming]
- “The Global in Question: Physicality and the Left-wing Internationalism in This Land So Rich in Beauty (1959),” at Ink Society Hong Kong (July 20, 2021).
- “The Monumental Landscape: Dam Construction and the Re-articulation of Human-Nature Relationship in Socialist Chinese Art (1949–1966),” at Art History at Lunch, c-organized by the Department of Fine Art and the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (December 18, 2020).
- “Grounds for Contestation: Landscape Painting, Imagining, and Territoriality in Cold War China and Taiwan” 爭論之地：冷戰期間大陸台灣的 地景畫、想像與屬地性, at the Department of Chinese Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (February 21, 2019).
- “Landscape and the Politics of Cultural Memory—Lu Fo-ting’s A Portrait of the 10,000 Li Great Wall (1962–1963),” at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Seminar on “Migration and the Humanities,” The Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University (November 7, 2018).
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Principal organizer, “Spatial Practices in Chinese Art History and Visual Studies, Online Book Talk Series,” Department of Chinese Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (October 2021–August 2022).
- Co-organizer of the panel, “Environmental Imagination in Chinese Studies,” at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), Boston (March 19–22, 2020) [Cancelled due to COVID-19].
- Chair of the panel, “Locality and Memory in East Asian Art,” at the College Art Association’s (CAA) 108th Annual Conference, Chicago (February 12–15, 2020).
- Co-organizer of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Seminar, “Migration, Memory, and the Archive,” at the Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University (February–April, 2019).
