Chak Kwong LAU, Dr

Chak Kwong Daniel LAU (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara; M.Phil., The University of Hong Kong) is Associate Professor and Associate Director (Research) of the Academy of Visual Arts, HKBU and Member of the China Calligraphers Association. He has served as a Visiting Scholar at both Peking University and Academic Sinica, Taipei. Before joining HKBU, he taught at the California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo and the University of California (UCSB), where he received the GSA Outstanding Teaching Award Honorable Mention in Humanities and Fine Arts.   

Lau pursues research as both a scholar and an artist. He is an art historian specialising in Chinese art, Chinese calligraphy, seal engraving, art and identity in late imperial China and Hong Kong calligraphy, with a particular focus on social and cultural implications of Chinese calligraphy in public venues in Hong Kong, modes of expression and representation in Chinese calligraphy, calligraphic materiality and multimodality. His work has been supported by research grants that include 3 General Research Funds (GRF) from the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong. He has published more than forty academic articles and exhibition catalogue entries on Chinese art, including contributions to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Proceedings of the Symposium on Artworks by Ming Loyalists in Early Qing Dynasty (Macao Museum of Art, 2018) and Double Beauty: Qing Dynasty Couplets from the Lechangzai Xuan Collection I & II (Art Museum, CUHK, 2007 & 2003).  Lau is an established artist whose practice encompasses Chinese calligraphy, seal engraving and the large-scale performance of Chinese calligraphy in public spaces. He has held 8 solo exhibitions in the United States, Hong Kong and Macau and participated in numerous influential group exhibitions at local and international museums and galleries. His calligraphy and seal engravings are in public collections, including those of the Art Museum of the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong.