Lauren Walden

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.

On a theoretical level, cosmopolitan tensions between universality and cultural specificity are applied to the Surrealist movement. Notwithstanding, 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-form 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. As such, 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 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 full-form draft monograph entitled 'Surrealism and the People's Republic of China' which is under contract with Routledge and due for publication in Autumn 2025.

Lauren is currently working on a project funded by the Henry Moore foundation on the Chinese Reception of Henry Moore and has research interests in Taiwanese Surrealism as well as Surrealism and artificial intelligence.