joynes@bu.edu
Les Joynes is a contemporary artist, curator, critic and Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi examining art and performative cultures in South Asia. He teaches courses in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Experimental Practices and cultural entrepreneurship at Renmin University and Peking University and is Visiting Faculty at both Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal and Royal University of Bhutan examining how ritual and performance index contemporary identity. He has led artist collaboration projects in France, Brazil, South Korea as well as Fulbright-Hays US Public Diplomacy projects in Mongolia and China and exploring ritual and performance.
He is an editor for ProjectAnywhere, a journal on Site-Specific Art at University of Melbourne Australia. His work has featured on NHK television Japan, Ehime Shimbun, Art Monthly, Sculpture Magazine and he has contributed to Art in America, Flash Art, Springer-Vienna and the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR).
Examining museums of the future he has curated museum and gallery exhibitions at the Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing, Zanabazar National Museum of Art, Mongolia, Treignac Projects France, Japan-UK Cultural Year. P House Gallery, Tokyo and served on the curatorial team for the Taipei Biennial, in Taiwan. In 2020 he founded the Inclusive Biennial (www.inclusivebiennial.com).
Artist residencies include the NKD Nordic Artist Center Fellowship, Norway, Beijing Inside Out Art Museum, China CEC-Arts Link, Russia, Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, São Paulo, Brazil, Seoul Foundation for Art and Culture, Seoul, Korea (ResArtis), Abbey Fellowship, National Academy Museum, New York.
Les holds a BA in History and MSc from Boston University, BA (Hons) Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London; MA Fine Art from Goldsmiths, London; MA from Musashino Art University, Tokyo; PhD from the Faculty of Art, Environment and Technology, Leeds Beckett University, UK; Post-Doctorate from the School of Art and Communications at University of São Paulo, Brazil and research scholar on the Columbia University Visiting Scholar and Scientist Program. He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Geographical Society.