Lauren Walden
My first degree was in Modern and Medieval Languages (French and Spanish) at the University of Cambridge. Having gained linguistic fluency, my cultural interests broadened beyond literature and an interest in visual arts and cultural institutions emerged. This was initially met by a Masters in Museum Studies at the University of Newcastle. I was lucky enough to have received a Special Exhibition Scholarship at Coventry University for a fully-funded Phd in Art History which was awarded in May 2019. My doctoral research elaborated a re-writing of Surrealism's cultural memory as cosmopolitan, a movement that is not culturally specific, coalescing with geographies beyond Western borders via the photographic medium. The thesis proves that the photographic medium was an indispensable tool and vision in the creation of a ‘Cosmopolitan Surrealism’, transcending the conceptions of national boundaries through multiple networks of global exchange harnessed by the Surrealists such as exhibitions, periodicals, photographic reproductions and the incorporation of non-western photographers into the movement. Hence, Cosmopolitanism became an empirical reality for Surrealist groupings around the world in contradistinction to a mere theoretical espousal. My research includes a chapter on Chinese photographer Lang Jingshan and interrogates his relationship with Man Ray. I also learnt Chinese to research-level alongside my Phd.
In September 2019, I began a Research Assistant post attached to the AHRC funded project "Postwar Urban Reconstruction in China, 1938-1958" spearheaded by Dr. Toby Lincoln. In March 2020, I commenced a postdoctoral fellowship in Chinese Contemporary Art at Birmingham City University.
My short book publication entitled 'Surrealism in Shanghai' was published by the Fondation Giacometti in 2022 and an expanded English co-edition was published in 202 with Hong Kong University Press/Fondation Giacometti. This book argues that Shanghai surrealism adopted a dialectical form, resonating with the modus operandi of the Parisian movement as well as China’s traditional belief system of Daoism. Reconciling the thought of Freud and Marx, Surrealism subsumed the multiple contradictions that divided Republican Shanghai, East and West, colonial and cosmopolitan, ancient and modern, navigating the porous boundaries that separate dream and reality. This was the first book-length publication dedicated to Chinese Surrealism.
I am a fellow of Advance HE (higher education academy) and a SEDA-accredited Phd supervisor. I recently completed a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Birmingham City University where I am currently a Research Fellow. This fellowship enabled me to complete a draft monograph entitled 'Surrealism and the People's Republic of China' which is under contract with Routledge and due for publication in Autumn 2025.
Supervisors: Professor Juliet Simpson Oxon. FRSA and Dr Imogen Racz.
In September 2019, I began a Research Assistant post attached to the AHRC funded project "Postwar Urban Reconstruction in China, 1938-1958" spearheaded by Dr. Toby Lincoln. In March 2020, I commenced a postdoctoral fellowship in Chinese Contemporary Art at Birmingham City University.
My short book publication entitled 'Surrealism in Shanghai' was published by the Fondation Giacometti in 2022 and an expanded English co-edition was published in 202 with Hong Kong University Press/Fondation Giacometti. This book argues that Shanghai surrealism adopted a dialectical form, resonating with the modus operandi of the Parisian movement as well as China’s traditional belief system of Daoism. Reconciling the thought of Freud and Marx, Surrealism subsumed the multiple contradictions that divided Republican Shanghai, East and West, colonial and cosmopolitan, ancient and modern, navigating the porous boundaries that separate dream and reality. This was the first book-length publication dedicated to Chinese Surrealism.
I am a fellow of Advance HE (higher education academy) and a SEDA-accredited Phd supervisor. I recently completed a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Birmingham City University where I am currently a Research Fellow. This fellowship enabled me to complete a draft monograph entitled 'Surrealism and the People's Republic of China' which is under contract with Routledge and due for publication in Autumn 2025.
Supervisors: Professor Juliet Simpson Oxon. FRSA and Dr Imogen Racz.
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Surrealist journals Documents (1929-30) and Minotaure (1933-39) sought to overturn the euro-centric hegemony of art history, especially the notion that Greece formed the original cradle of civilisation. Although the Surrealists attempted to attenuate the colonial legacy of art history, the movement seems to reside in a state of exception apropos the provenance of sculpture featured in their periodicals.
Due to close-knit linkages with anthropologists in these periodicals, the Surrealist’s understanding of indigenous art was far from superficial nor was it limited to mere aesthetic borrowings as was presented in William Rubin’s controversial Primitivism exhibition (1984). The African sculptures in both journals testify to a much wider influence upon Surrealist thought, embodying notions of otherness, ritual, and freedom of the spirit, the occult, automatism and non-national limits. As such, the original use-value of sculptures within their indigenous African cultures will be interrogated beyond purely aesthetic concerns and aligned with core Surrealist ideas.
Minotaure publishes Marcel Griaule’s Mission Dakar-Djibouti and its treasure-trove of looted African wares that would become the property of France. Ultimately, photomechanical reproduction of these sculptures did not satiate the colonial powers’ lustfulness for possession. The original, ‘auratic’ object still reigned supreme, creating an uneasy complicity between Surrealism and the ideology of Colonialism they vehemently protested against.
Dr Lauren Walden was granted a doctorate from Coventry University in 2019 where she interrogated instances of cultural exchange between Surrealism and Africa, Oceania, Latin America and China through the prism of photography. Her PhD utilised primary sources in French, Spanish and Chinese and she received a fellowship from the Centre for Creative Photography in Arizona to consult the archives of Mexican photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo. She also holds a BA from the University of Cambridge and an MA from Newcastle University. Amongst others, Dr Walden has an upcoming publication in Taylor and Francis’s Visual Resources Journal entitled ‘British Museum Ethnographic Photography at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition’. She is currently a visiting lecturer in Art History at the University of Hertfordshire.