Professor Jongwoo Jeremy Kim Traces Queer Lineages at the College Art Association Conference

Presenting new research at the 2026 College Art Association conference, Kim shared work from his forthcoming book “Korean Accents, Asian Accents: Queer Art Across the Pacific.”

Professor Jongwoo Jeremy Kim presented his latest research paper, “Queer Elders, Undead: Kang Seung Lee,” as part of the College Art Association’s 114th annual conference in Chicago on February 20, 2026. The talk is drawn from his fourth book project, Korean Accents, Asian Accents: Queer Art Across the Pacific, which he will continue developing this fall as a Clark Fellow at the Clark Art Institute.

Focusing on the work of Korean American artist Kang Seung Lee, Kim’s paper explores how the artist redraws family trees not through bloodlines, but through queer affinity. Lee’s drawings, installations, and films call forth queer elders — artists who helped shape paths of survival — reworking traditions of ancestral worship into acts of trans-temporal connection. Central to the paper are Lee’s 2019 drawings based on photographs by Tseng Kwong Chi, including Cotton Field, Tennessee (1979) and Grand Canyon, Arizona (1987).

Kim’s presentation coincided with another conference highlight, also on February 20: a conversation between School of Art alumna Joyce Kozloff (BFA ’64) and critic Nancy Princenthal as part of CAA’s Annual Artist Interviews.