Lucía King’s research and practice fall into three strands. The first pertains to her work as a practitioner in drawing, painting and installation artworks. The second concerns her engagement as a researcher of artists’ moving image. Following a period of residency in India in the 2000s, Lucía acquired a PhD from SOAS Centre for Media and Film (University of London) specialising in the creative methodologies of South Asian artists’ filmmakers and experimental documentary filmmakers, including the transnational distribution contexts of their works (1990s to the present). Thirdly, she is a curator of artists’ moving image and, in 2014, she founded VisionMix, an artist-led professional network of artists, filmmakers and curators that operates transnationally, with many of its associate members based in India.          

Drawing and Spatial Practice
Lucía’s large-scale drawings (2014-2021) investigate the shared temporal and spatial properties of filmmaking and painting as artistic disciplines; the ways that storytelling in a film creates a perceptual relationship with the viewer in relation to the painted or the drawn image.  In one of her key series of drawings, Making the land to live on, the landscapes and urban city-scapes, her drawings are on large rolls of Arches paper, and the proportion of the drawing relates to Cinemascope framing in film (a 1:2.35 aspect ratio). This encourages a link between the ‘stilled image’ and cinema spectatorship. Her drawings are a means of formulating a variety of imagined, improbable and non-figurative landscapes that couldn’t in actuality be inhabited; speculative spaces that represent a struggle to appropriate a sense of belonging to the lived environments. Lucía’s panoramas are an amassment of lines that disrupt and question the colonising gaze of western landscape painting, or the developmental paradigms of architecture visualisations of cities yet unbuilt. King has exhibited these works, and video animations that relate to the drawings in recent years, such as Espacio Santa Clara, Sevilla (2020); Aspa Contemporary, Madrid (2019); Appleton Gallery, Lisbon (2019); Santoraspace205, Santa Ana, California (2018) and ‘Future Orbits', Kochi-Muziris Biennial, (collateral Event) India (2017).

Website for drawing/installation practice: www.luciaking.co.uk

South Asian moving image research

Lucía’s research into Indian film and artists’ video is particularly focused on the processes and concepts of film authorship by filmmakers and producers, taking into account social and contextual determination and film historical legacies that precede them. Alongside Rashmi Sawhney, she guest edited a South Asian special edition of the journal, Moving Image Review and Arts journal (vol. 7.2) which assembles leading film- and art critical voices in a series of articles that discuss artists’ film and non-fiction film movements in India and Pakistan, from the 1980s to the present. The above, and other articles on this subject that Lucía has published, have emerged from her role as a founding Director of the moving image network, VisionMix since 2014.

VisionMix Curation

Lucía’s interested in curation has led to VisionMix’s importance in networking artists transnationally, whilst also generating practice-based research data that can be produced in international film professional contexts. VisionMix curates exhibitions,  knowledge exchange and produces publications that critique, and bring fresh vision into South Asian art and film research and its public showcasing See: https://www.visionmix.info/archive

VisionMix's  'Loss & Transience' exhibition at the Hong-gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2021) brings the work of 10 moving image-makers in a physical exhibition and series of online presentations by the participants. Lucía hold a PhD in S. Asian arts, and is also a consultant to Arts producers. The British Council & ACE supported VisionMix from 2015 to the present, and also benefited from 9 other international funding grants and institutional support (2014-2021). A selection of previous projects include:

2019: Screening at Proyector Festival Madrid (2019)- Spain’s primary Moving Image festival (I led 2 public curator’s workshop/screenings).

2018: A Masterclass Series: VisionMix associates provide professional practice exchange (in Univ. of Winchester Film Production dept + VisionMix lab, UK).

2018: Published an extensive journal edition for: Moving Image Review & Arts Journal (MIRAJ) profiling the history/key South Asian movements in moving image, relevant to producers & researchers.

2017: Future Orbits - An exhibition + artists/curators’ laboratory- partners: Kochi-Muziris Biennial, South India + a leading Indian art institute.

2015: An ‘Artists, Filmmakers & Curators Workshop’ in New Delhi at Goethe Institute and JNU University, engaging Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, & British Council (50 participants- budget £54K- Leading to commissions/defining the identity of VisionMix; showcasing films/artists’ talks & providing networking platforms).

2014-15: A documentary film (directed/filmed by me) on 12 leading artist- filmmakers from across India, anticipating professional exchange between Asian-British & Indian artist-filmmakers/producers. (Partner: The South Asia Institute, UK).

Guest editor of the South Asia-focused edition of the Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ) vol 7.2 (2018); an extensive review in 8 articles (and preface) on the recent and historic trajectories of artists' moving image in S. Asia, through a postcolonial lens (Pub. Intellect journals)

Author/curator of online catalogue for the largest VisionMix event in 2015: a conference-symposium featuring 40 international artist-filmmakers available on https://c832c372-ae1e-4501-9071- 71adcaf58370.filesusr.com/ugd/121233_269a1833348040eb94d8b4633a89d0af.pdf

My direct Research Expertise relates to: 

• the practice and application of drawing, painting, sculpture and artists' moving image in western and South Asian art contexts
• environmental art; projects related to European and (South) Asian moving image, experimental film and it contextual study
• South Asian contemporary art and art criticism
• questions around the spectatorial in artworks' public reception
• transnational and transcultural perspectives in the arts 

My supervisory interests are in the methods and contextual study of practices in drawing, painting, performance, sculpture, installation and public art. This includes also the intersection of art and exhibitionary practices with environmental and political activist strategies and tactics (in an interdisciplinary sense). Previous supervisory experience has related to European, South- and South East Asian film and artists’ moving image in its historical context (20^th/21^st centuries). I also have expertise in global experimental documentary film practices, particularly concerning authorial methods of the filmmakers (1990s-present) and patronage networks; transnationalism and debates around ‘trans-locationality’ in relation to global art practices/criticism and thinking around contemporary curation of film and visual arts.

All of the above mentorship also incorporates feminist, gender, intersectional and queer studies and transcultural perspectives in the arts and humanities as well as a familiarity with postcolonial art critical studies and theory. As a separate area of research, I have an interest in speculative fabulation as a creative, critical and art-making practice.