Richard Fung

Richard Fung
Sea in the Blood, 2000, 26 min., colour video
Born	1954 (age 62–63) Port of Spain, Trinidad
Nationality	Canadian
Known for	Video art
Notable work	Sea in the Blood, 2000
Awards	Bell Canada Award for Outstanding Achievement in Video Art

Richard Fung (born 1954) is a video artist, writer, public intellectual and theorist who currently lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. He was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and is openly gay.

Fung is also an associate professor at OCAD University. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, and received a ME in sociology and cultural studies.

Fung's work in video interrogates the role of Asian men in gay pornography, while underscoring the intersections between colonialism, immigration, racism, homophobia, and AIDS. Many of his works have been presented at international venues within Canada and the United States of America.

Fung is also an activist. He founded the Toronto-based organization Gay Asians of Toronto in 1980.

Fung produced a short documentary titled My Mother’s Place (1990) that pays respect to his mother Rita. The documentary records Rita’s Chinese-Trinidadian childhood, and the family's immigration to Canada, while focusing on the formation of Fung's complex identity in the process of ‘coming out’ to his family.

After studying at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Fung worked as a video animator at Lawrence Heights, a public housing area in Toronto. At his position at Lawrence Heights, Fung simultaneously learned to make video and trained people in the community to produce their own images . These images were later aired on the community television channel. Later on, Fung received his degree in cinema studies and produced his first independent video, Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians in 1984. Fung went on to produce several videos that won awards and were screened in numerous venues and archived in various locations such as the London Institute of Contemporary Art, Chicago’s Art Institute, and the Getty Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2003 and to present day, Fung teaches Integrated Media and Art and Social Change at the Ontario College of Art and Design. His other teaching positions include "Chancellor's Visiting Associate Professor at University of California- Irvine, Visiting Assistant Professor at State University of New York- Buffalo and Visiting Scholar at the Mass Communications Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi”. Prior to his present day role at the Ontario College of Arts and Design, Fung was the coordinator of the Centre for Media and Culture in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. As an active member of the art community, Fung has served as a member on the editorial boards of Fuse Magazine and Amerasia Journal. He is a member of the Caribbean Contemporary Arts in Trinidad, Images Festival, the first Racial Equality Committee of the Canada Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. Fung is also a programmer with the Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival. “A former Rockefeller Fellow at the Centre for Media, Culture and History at New York University, Richard has lectured across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia”. Lastly, Fung has written and published many works mainly on aspects of culture and identity such as his essay ‘Looking For My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Porn Video’ and his book on culture art in collaboration with Gagnon, ‘Landscapes’.