Biography
Chen-yuan David Chuang studies the visual and material cultures of medieval China. His research, broadly, focuses on how ‘things’ operate across different social strata in relation to historical agency, and how materiality and visuality engages in viewership and functionality within artistic practice.
David earned a BA in History and Law from National Taiwan University and received an MA in the History of Art and Archaeology of East Asia from SOAS, University of London. His MA dissertation with Distinction, Hidden in Plain Sight: Xiang Shengmo’s Snowscape Painting and a Cultural Response to Climate Change in Little Ice Age Ming China (1368–1644), considered how environmental anxiety and literati subjectivity coalesced in early modern landscape pictorials.
Before joining UChicago, David worked at Phillips as Associate Representative in Modern and Contemporary Art. He was elected a Postgraduate Member of the Royal Historical Society (UK) in 2024.