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BIOGRAPHY

Les Joynes, PhD

Lives and works in New York.

Image: Joynes in sculpture performance at the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture.



Les Joynes (US) is an interdisciplinary artist that uses experimental practices to explore site and social memory. He is founder of FormLAB - a nomadic installation series that exhibits in Asia, the Americas and Europe. 


He serves as an Editor for ProjectAnywhere, a journal on site specific art at Parsons/New School  New York and University of Melbourne, Australia. He was CEC ArtsLink Grantee for Mongolia (2014) and Russia (2017); recipient of Fulbright Hays US Public Diplomacy Awards for Mongolia and China; Research Fellow, University of the Arts London Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN); RAI Fellow serving on the Art and Anthropology Committee at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London; and is active in the US Department of State ZERO1 Art and Technology Network, 


Les completed his MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London, MA at Musashino Art University, Japan; PhD in  the Faculty of Art, Environment and Technology, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK; and Post-Doctorate on Performance at the School of Art and Communications (ECA) at University of São Paulo in Brazil. He is a scholar on new media and intercultural collaboration and new media exchange at Columbia University (2009-present).


Les's new work explores historicities and "folds in time" in and around urban centers, former monument spaces and their relation to social cohesion and collective memory and methodologies pioneered by scientist and artist Fernand Deligny (1913-1996).


He is recipient of the US Fulbright-Hays Award for Mongolia and US Public Diplomacy Mission China Award; Edwin Austin Abbey Fellowship for Public Art; the Japan Ministry of Culture Scholarship; The Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain (FRGS) and the Taiwan Ministry of Education Scholarship. Publications Include: Going Beyond, Art as Adventure (Cambridge, UK); Mapping Madness: Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing (Neiman Foundation, New York); ProjectAnywhere V2 (Parsons, New York); Looking to New Institutional Models: China’s Cultural Landscape by Mid-Century (Long Museum, Shanghai); Art in America; Springer (Vienna) and his work has featured in Art Monthly (UK), Playgraph (Japan), Commons and Sense (Japan), Sculpture Magazine (US), NHK Television (Japan). He serves on the editorial board and artist-selection for ProjectAnywhere, Australia. He has presented on contemporary art at Cambridge University; University of California; the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, Germany; Pro-Arte, St. Petersburg, Russia; and La Salle College of the Arts, Singapore.

Image: Les Joynes (left) and members of Blue Sun installing FormLAB at Zanabazar Museum of Fine Art, Mongolia, 2014.

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