she/her
Arts Division
Assistant Professor
Faculty
Porter College Academic
D-212
Porter Faculty Services
Ph.D., History of Art, University of California, Berkeley
B.A., Asian Studies, Carleton College
Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo's research focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese and Tibetan art and visual cultures. Her current book project, The Peripheries of Empire: Art Workers Traveling to Tibet under the People’s Republic of China, 1960-2008, examines the visual construction of ethnic Tibetan identity in state-sponsored artworks and unpacks how the majority Han Chinese population turned to minorities at the nation’s periphery to rediscover cultural ‘authenticity’ in the post-Mao period. As a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), she curated the first major exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art on the West Coast. She has published articles in the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Orientations, and Archives of Asian Art, and continues her curatorial practice in addition to teaching and research. Most recently, she curated Endless Knot: Struggle and Healing in the Buddhist World at BAMPFA in 2022-2023.
Art and visual cultures of modern and contemporary Tibet and China; visual construction of race, ethnicity, and gender in Asia; art of the Tibetan diaspora; Chinese socialist propaganda and visual culture; politics of spatial construction in colonial contexts
Chinese and Tibetan art-19th century to present; Art and propaganda; socialist art; colonial visual cultures; politics and art; early Asian art and archaeology
AAUW Short Term Publication Grant, 2022-3
National Humanities Center, Summer Fellow, 2022
Hirose Research Grant, Davidson College, 2022 (Switzerland)
Faculty Study and Research Grant, Davidson College, 2022 (Research Assistants)
Faculty Study and Research Grant, Davidson College, 2019 (Dharamsala, India)
Andrew D. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, 2017-18 (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive)
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, University of California, Berkeley, 2017
Dissertation Writing Summer Grant, History of Art Department, University of California, Berkeley, 2016
Institute for East Asian Studies Graduate Research Grant, University of California, Berkeley, 2014 (Kathmandu, Nepal)
Endless Knot: Encounters in the Global Buddhist World, December 2022 – May 2023 (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). Primary Curator.
Spiritual Mountains: The Art of Wesley Tongson, January 2022 (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). Consultant.
Boundless: Contemporary Tibetan Artists at Home and Abroad. Fall 2018 to Spring 2019 (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). Primary Curator.
Master Traces, Transcultural Visions, Transcultural Buddhist Visual cultures exhibition. Spring 2018 (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). Primary Curator.
Al Wong, Lost Sister. Mixed media series of collages by Bay Area contemporary artist. Spring 2018 (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). Co-Curator.
Cal Conversations: Dreaming the Lost Ming. Paintings of the Ming-Qing transition period. Winter 2018 (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). Assistant curator.
“Beyond the Brush: Wesley Tongson’s Contemporary Ink Experimentations,” Asia Network Annual Conference, April 2023.
“Remediating Landscapes: Lin Fengmian and Wu Guanzhong’s Oil and Ink Exploration, from France to China,” College Art Association Annual Conference, upcoming February, 2023.
“Wesley Tongson’s Techniques in Ink Painting,” Wesley Tongson: Home and Away (Panel Discussion), Hong Kong University and Gallery du Monde, May 2022.
“Chen Danqing: Gazing Back Towards China,” Asia Network Annual Conference, April 2022.
“Negotiating a Place in the Art World: Women in the Arts,” co-presented with John Corso-Esquivel, Women’s Leadership Conference, March 2022.
“Becoming Waste: An Examination of Chen Qiulin’s Farewell Poem (2002) and Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006),” Waste Now! Histories and Contemporalities of Discards workshop, June 2021.
“Revolutionary Karma? Blindness and Muteness in Li Jun’s Serf (1963),” Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, March 2021.
“Apostasy and Spectral Memories: Examining Tenzing Rigdol’s Installation Our Land, Our People,” College Arts Association Annual Conference, February 2021.
Panel Organizer and Chair for “In and Out of Place: Migration, Memory, and Citizenship in 21st-Century Asian Art,” College Arts Association Annual Conference, February 2021.
Invited Panel Discussant for “Art under Military Occupation,” Association for Asian Studies, Annual Conference, Denver, March 2019.
“Displaced in Place: Lhasa Tibetan Artists in Search of Homeland,” Association for Asian Studies, Annual Conference, Denver, March 2019.
“Becoming Visible: Gender and Space in Chen Qiulin’s Farewell Poem (2002) and Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006),” in Viktor Pal and Iris Borowy eds. Waste and Discards in the Asia Pacific Region (London and New York: Routledge, 2023)
“Beyond the Brush: Wesley Tongson’s Experimental Ink Paintings,” Orientations, Jan/Feb 2022.
“Between Concealment and Revelation: Empress Dowager Cixi’s Experiments with Representation,” Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 72.1, Spring 2022.
“Labor and Art During the Cultural Revolution: An Analysis of the Sculptural Installation Wrath of the Serfs,” Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art, Special Edition on the Cultural Revolution, 4.2 & 3 (2017): 243-268.
