About Ari

Ari Heinrich (he/they) writes about transnational visual cultures, with emphases on the origins of anti-Chinese racism, on medical representations of the body, and on the use of biological materials in art. Ari has also translated key works of queer literature from Taiwan and contributed to queer Sinophone studies. They received the Master’s degree from Harvard University and the PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and have been supported by grants from the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Australian Research Council (ARC Future Fellowship), the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and others. Ari has lectured on topics ranging from the history of anatomical illustration to the economics of race and racism behind popular exhibitions of Chinese cadavers in internationally circulating anatomical displays. Currently Ari is working on a book about the pigment melanin in the art of Jes Fan, and is co-editor of a recent special issue of Screen Bodies: The Journal of Embodiment, Media Arts, and Technology on the artist Lu Yang. You can read their most recent literary essay (on melanin, geology, metaphor, loss, and Melbourne under lockdown) here. Ari is Professor of Chinese Literature and Media at the Australian National University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

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