Accessing primary sources in French, Spanish and Chinese, 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 demonstrates 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. I studied Chinese to research-level alongside my PhD.
I have published two monographs on Chinese Surrealism, establishing a new sub-field of study. 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 2024 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 and published my second monograph in Autumn 2025 with Routledge: 'Surrealism and the People's Republic of China: From Mao to Now' Here, I demonstrate that there are two distinct levels of Surrealist reception in China: intrinsic conceptual ties with traditional Chinese art through automatism, transgressing the real, dialectics, spirituality and psychological interiority as well the historically contingent: revolutionary fervour, indirect critiques of authority, assertions of freedom, artistic experimentation and the processing of trauma. This conceptual approach negates simplistic tropes of Chinese artists ‘copying from the West’, many concepts in traditional Chinese art foreshadowing western avant-garde practices. This stands in opposition to a small amount of extant critique which has dismissed Surrealism as a mere stylistic trend in Contemporary Chinese Art.
I am currently working on a project funded by the Henry Moore Foundation on the Chinese Reception of Henry Moore and have research interests in Taiwanese Surrealism as well as Surrealism and artificial intelligence. My research has been supported by fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, Centre for Creative Photography Arizona, Henry Moore Foundation and Fondation Giacometti.
Books
November 2025 Surrealism and the People’s Republic of China : From Mao to Now Routledge https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003382393/surrealism-people-republic-china-lauren-walden
November 2024 Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai Expanded English edition with Hong Kong University Press. https://hkupress.hku.hk/Surrealism_from_Paris_to_Shanghai#:~:text=Surrealism%20in%20China%20initially%20gained,movement%20in%20Paris%20and%20Tokyo.
November 2022 Le Surréalisme de Paris à Shanghai (Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai) Editions Fage/Ecole des modernités Institut Giacometti, Paris. https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/fr/nos-publications/ecole-des-modernites#https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/fr/publication/82/le-surrealisme-de-paris-a-shanghai
Journal articles and Book Chapters
Forthcoming ‘CoBrA’s Chinoiseries: The calligraphic contortions of a post-war European avant-garde movement’ Invited submission as part of a special edited volume ‘Chinoiserie: Mirror of Modernity’ (Brill East and West: Culture, Diplomacy and Interactions Series) edited by Dr. Dominique Bauer, KU Leuven
November 2025 ‘Such is Shanghai: A Century of Surrealism in China’s Cosmopolitan Metropolis’ Journal of Visual Art Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/14702029.2025.2571835
April 2023 ‘Surrealism in Chinese periodicals: Hedonism, Horror and Shanghai’s Former French Concession’ Dada/Surrealism (University of Iowa) https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/dadasur/article/id/31894/
March 2023 ‘Lola Alvarez Bravo: Subverting Surrealist Photography in Mexico’ Photography and Culture (Taylor and Francis) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17514517.2023.2181803
November 2022 ‘Surrealism in China’ in The Routledge Companion to Surrealism, edited by Kirsten Strom (New York: Routledge) https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003139652/routledge-companion-surrealism-kirsten-strom
April 2021 ‘Africa in the Surrealist Imaginary: Photography of Sculpture in Minotaure and Documents’ Visual Anthropology (Taylor and Francis) Volume 34. Issue 3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2021.1908110
February 2020 ‘Cultural Diplomacy in Regional Art Institutions’ Visual Studies (Taylor and Francis) https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2020.1715242
October 2019: ‘British Museum Photography at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition’ Visual Resources(Taylor and Francis) https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2020.1672358
December 2018: Le Surréalisme en Chine: Terrain Inconnu / Surrealism in China: Unchartered Territory Revue Histoire de L’Art (Institut National de l’Histoire de L’Art, Paris). https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/9163/
November 2017: Transmediality in Symbolist and Surrealist Photo-Literature (Bruges La Morte and Nadja) in Open Cultural Studies De Grutyer https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2017-0020
Edited Volumes
December 2024 ‘Magical Metropolis: The Shanghai Surreal’ Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art Issue 11.23 https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jcca_00100_2
Selected Conference Presentations
September 2026 Keynote ‘Cosmopolitan Mo(o)res of East Asia: indigenous tradition prefiguring western modernism’ at ‘Recasting Global Modernities and the making of shared worlds: New perspectives through Henry Moore’
September 2026 ’Psycho-Spiritual Healing in Post-War Chinese and Taiwanese Surrealism’ British Association for Chinese Studies Annual Conference, Lancaster University
July 2026 ‘Taiwanese Surrealism as ‘Self-Unconscious Historiography’ 26th Biennial Conference European Association for Chinese Studies Ca Foscari University Venice.
June 2025 ‘Surrealist Pop: Propaganda as Muse?’, Competing for People’s Eyes and Ears from Mao to Xi, Charles University, Prague.
June 2025: ‘From Muse to Mother: (En)gendering Sino-British Cultural Diplomacy through Moore in China’, Gender, Diplomacy and Global Connections in Modern Asia, Cardiff University.
October 2024 Chinese Surrealism on the Battlefield: Psychological trauma during the Sino-Japanese and Civil Wars (1937-1949). International Society for the Study of Surrealism Annual Conference American University of Paris.
August 2024 ‘Living Landscapes: Avant-Garde Animism and the Southwestern Art Research Group’ European Association for Chinese Studies Conference, Tallinn University, Estonia.
June 2024 ‘Surrealism in 1980s China: The Red Travels Group’ Joint East Asian Studies Conference, University of Central Lancashire, Preston.
March 2024 ‘Pseudo-Characters: Surrealist Calligraphy in France and China’ France/China 60 years and Beyond, Queen’s University Belfast.
Websites
Walden, L. And Lincoln, T. (2020) ‘Chinese History for Teachers’ https://chinesehistoryforteachers.omeka.net
