Areas of Specialization

• Cultures of the Asia Pacific

• Comparative Cultures: Modern to Contemporary.

• Experimental practices in performance, installation and film

• Cultural entrepreneurship and the arts

Education

• PhD Fine Art Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK

• MA Fine Art Musashino Art University, Tokyo

• MA Fine Art Goldsmiths, University of London

• M.Sc Boston University/ Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB)

• BA (Hons) Fine Art Central Saint Martins College of Art, London

• BA cum laude, History, Boston University

Other Education

• Post-Doctorate Fine Art, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

• Erasmus Scholar Fine Art Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris

• Masterclass with James Rosenquist, Guggenheim Education

• Teacher Training, Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning

• Advanced Curriculum Design Training, Teachers College

• GoldAward Academic Mentor Training, University of London

• Exchange Scholar, Sophia University Tokyo (Japanese studies) and American University in Paris (French studies), National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan (Chinese studies).

Teaching and Research

• Visiting Associate Professor, Fine Art and Curriculum Design, Royal University of Bhutan, Takste, Bhutan (2027)

• Visiting Associate Professor, Visva Bharati University (2022)

• Research Scholar on Art and Education, Teachers College, Department of Organization and Leadership (2022-2025); Department of International and Transcultural Studies (2021-2022); Department of Art & Art Education (2016-2018) Teachers College, Columbia University (2016-present)

• Postdoctoral Art Research Fellow School of Art & Communications, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (2015-2017).

• Fulbright Senior Scholar on Art and Performance, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi (2022).

• Professor of Record for Modern and Contemporary Art History and hybrid lecture/studio practice courses, School of the Arts, Renmin University, Beijing (2013-2019)

• Visiting Professor of Creative Industries, Peking University Institute for the Creative Industries, School of the Arts, Peking University, Beijing

• Visiting Lecturer on Art & Performance Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (2013)

• MFA Studio Critiques, University of California Santa Barbara, California (2006)

• Graduate Lecturer/ Studio Critiques, Musashino Art University, Tokyo (1998-2001)

Other Research Positions

• Artist in Residence, Otago, New Zealand (2025)

• Research Artist, FormLAB - leading artistic research projects in France, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Mongolia, China, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka.

• Postdoctoral Research Scholar on Arts. School of Art & Communications, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (2015-2017).

• Highland Institute Fellow India (2022-present)

• Fellow, Royal Geographical Society, London

• Field Research Fellow on US-Foreign Education Exchange, American Center for Mongolian Studies, Ulaanbaatar (2016)

• Chair, Young Researchers Forum, American Center for Mongolian Studies (2016).

• Research Scholar, University of the Arts London Research Center on Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, London (2015).

• Research Scholar in Japanese Art, Japan Ministry of Education and Culture Research Scholar on Japanese Art, Musashino Art University, Tokyo (1997-2001).

• Bauhaus Artist and Research Fellow, Bauhaus Foundation Kolleg Program, Dessau, Germany (2008-2009)

• Curatorial Research Associate, Inaugural Taipei Biennial “Sites of Desire” exhibition, Taiwan (1997-1998).

• Graduate Research Assistant, Technology parallel learning models, California State Polytechnic University (1988-1989).

• Graduate Research, Comparative Education, Trustees of Boston University (1986-1988)

Awards And Honors 

• Fulbright Academic and Professional Excellence Award (2022)

• US Department of State RTP-SCA Grant for Sri Lanka (2022)

• American Arts Incubator Art and Technology Artist (2019)

• Fulbright Hays US Public Diplomacy Award for China (2017)

• CEC ArtsLink Foundation Grant, St. Petersburg, Russia (2017)

• Renmin University of China Merit Award, Beijing (2018)

• Taiwan Ministry of Education Huayu Grant (2016)

• Wheatley Fellow, Birmingham City University (2016)

• Research Fellow, American Center for Mongolian Studies (2016)

• UAL Arts Research Fellow, University of the Arts London Research Center on Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (2015)

• Fulbright Hays US Public Diplomacy Award Mongolia (2014)

• CEC ArtsLink Foundation Grant for Mongolia (2014)

• Queenstown Council, Singapore Citation Award (2009)

• Abbey Fellow, National Design Museum, New York (2009)

• Bauhaus Foundation Fellow, Dessau, Germany (2008)

• The Nordic Artists Center Fellowship, Norway (2008)

• Musashino Art University Selection Award (2001)

• Japanese Ministry of Education and Culture Scholar (1998-2001)

• Erasmus Scholar, Ecole des Beaux-arts, Paris (1995)

• King Sturge Award for Sculpture, London (1995)

Les Joynes

My name is Les. I am originally from Santa Barbara, a Pacific coastal town in Southern California. I began my journey in the arts studying photography under Disney cinematographer Wolfgang Lauter and held my first exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art when I was eighteen.

I moved to London to study sculpture under New Zealand artist Stephen Furlonger and completed my BA (Hons) Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. I went on to complete my MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London where I created a process-based art practice. Awarded the Japan Monbusho Scholarship in 1997 I completed my Masters in Fine Art at Musashino Art University in Tokyo and in 2012 my PhD from the Faculty of Art, Environment and Technology, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK; and Post-Doctorate from the School of Art and Communications at University of São Paulo, Brazil where I specializing in cross-cultural collaboration..

In New York I am Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History at Columbia University, invited by Rosalind Krauss, PhD, to research the informe/formless in contemporary art practice. Recently I returned from Aotearoa | New Zealand, where I was Artist in Residence at Te Kura Waiho Toi ki Ōtākou | Dunedin School of Art. There I researched Pacific and Māori cultures and customs for a forthcoming collaborative exhibition.

My work has been exhibited internationally at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the Barbican and Milch Galleries in London, Gallery Thomas Jaeckel and CBGB in New York, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, the Norimatsu Museum in Japan, the Inside-Out Art Museum in Beijing, and other venues across Asia and Europe..

I have contributed to curatorial projects including Networks, which presented 100 contemporary artists as part of the UK/Japan Cultural Year, the inaugural Taipei Biennial at the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, and exhibitions at the Inside-Out Art Museum in Beijing, the Norimatsu Museum in Matsuyama, Japan, and the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture in São Paulo.

Supporting international collaboration between artists and universities, I currently serve on the Board of the College Art Association (CAA), the Fulbright National Selection Committee, and Japan Contemporaries. I have also served on the editorial board for ProjectAnywhere, a peer-reviewed journal based at the University of Melbourne and Parsons School of Art.

As an educator, I have taught BA students at Musashino Art University in Tokyo and served as Professor of Record for lecture courses in Modern and Contemporary Art History and studio courses in site-specific art. I have also held visiting professor roles at Visva Bharati University in India and at Peking University in China.

Since the early 1990s my artistic practice has focused on immersive installations and site-specific performances that integrate local materials, found objects, plaster, pigments, urethanes, and electronics. Collaboration is central to this work: I partner with local artists to develop new approaches to materials and place, opening ways to explore cultural identities.

In 1997 I founded FormLAB, a nomadic studio where the evolution of a work—from raw materials to works in progress to final exhibition—could be experienced as part of the art itself. This approach, inspired by Allan Kaprow’s Happenings and Theater Piece No. 1 at Black Mountain College, situates the studio as a dynamic and transformative space, equal in importance to the exhibition venue.

Through these projects, I continue to explore how process, place, and collaboration shape new meaning and identity through contemporary art.

[CV upon request]

Selected Lectures and Workshops

Joynes has been invited as guest lecturer and visiting artist at University of the Arts London, University of Cambridge, Kookmin University, Seoul; Columbia University, the Bard-Smolny Curating Program, St Petersburg, University of California, Otis College of Art, Peking University and universities in India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Mongolia and Singapore. Selected lectures and workshops include:

2025 FormLAB as a Nomadic Studio, Center of Contemporary Art (CoCA), Canterbury, Aotearoa, New Zealand (2025), Collaborative Practices, Te Kura Waiho Toi ki Ōtākou Dunedin School of Art, Otepoti, Aotearoa, New Zealand (2025); “Coaching and Mentoring in Art Education”, College Art Association Annual Conference, New York (2025), Coaching for Future Art Managers, Teachers College (2025); Coaching for Social Work (2025). 2023 “Creative Coaching Mindsets, National Taiwan University Normal University, Taipei (2023); “Pop Art and the Contemporary” National Museum of Taiwanese Literature, Taipei (2023); “Turning the studio inside-out”, National Taiwan University of Education, Taipei (2023); “Contemporary Arts and Climate Change”, National Sun Yat Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2023); “Models for intercultural Collaboration”, National Sun Yat Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2023); 2022 “Rethinking UNESCO Heritage: Expansion of Durga Puja into the Modern Sphere”, Kolkata, India (2022); “US-Indian collaboration in Education”, Vista-Bharati University India (2022); “Imagining the Museum of the Future”, Colombo National Museum, Sri Lanka (2022); “Interdisciplinary practices and artistic research”, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka (2022); “Collaborative Arts as Public Diplomacy, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka (2022); “Artistic Research in Performance”, University of Visual & Performing Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka (2022); “Curriculum Design and the Arts”, Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management, Visakh, India (2022); “Collaborative and Site Specific art” Visva-Bharati University, India (2022); “Imagining careers in the arts” Vellammal Schools, Chennai, India (2022); “Photography and Memory of Disaster”- Tohoku Reframed, Chennai, India (2022); “Curating Site Specificity in India”, Visva-Bharati University, India (2022); 2021 “Coaching Mindset for Museums and Art Professionals, Association of Academic Museums and Galleries Conference (2021); 2020 “Central Asian art and the future”, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC (2020); 2019 ZERO1: US Department of State American Arts Incubator, San Francisco (2019); “Models for Intercultural Collaboration in the Arts and Culture”, Beihang University, Beijing, (2019); 2018 “Robert Rauschenberg in China”, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2018); “Entrepreneurship and Beyond Design Thinking in Creative Industries”, Peking University, Beijing (2018); “Pioneering Doctoral Research in the Creative Industries”, [Keynote], Peking University, Beijing (2018); "Art and Social Practice Chair, ProjectAnywhere Conference, Parsons School of Art, New York (2018); Cooperation between China and the US, Columbia University Global Center Beijing, China (2018); Artist-led models for museums”: Long Museum Shanghai, China (2018); 2017“US-China collaboration in the arts” US Embassy and the Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, China (2017); “Curating Across Cultures”, Bard Smolny MA Curating Program, Saint Petersburg, Russia (2017); Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, China (2017); 2016 Young Researchers Conference, American Center for Mongolian Studies, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (2016); College Arts Association, New York (2016); 2015 “Creativity as Intercultural Interface”, Teachers College, Columbia University (2015); “Performing cross-cultural spaces,” Mongolian State University for Art and Culture, Ulaanbaatar (2015); “The Artist as Interface” Teachers College, Columbia University, New York (2015); “Cross-cultural collaboration in Brazil and Mongolia,” Cambridge University, UK (2015); Young Researchers Conference, Mongolian National University for Education, Mongolia (2015); Mongolian National University for Art and Culture, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (2015); University of the Arts London Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, UK (2015); 2014 Zanabazar National Museum of Art, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (2014); “China Modern” National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China (2014); The Artist Explorer” College Arts Association Conference, Chicago (2014); 2013 Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (2013); 2012 Art Studio as Classroom Live, Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012); Performing the Museum, Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012); Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Seoul, South Korea (2012); “Interdisciplinary Art as Research”, MA Fine Art, Kookmin University, Seoul; “Exploring site and local identity”, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, South Korea (2012); 2010 Treignac-Projet, Correze, France (2010); 2009“Studio as Laboratory - Merging Photography with Performance”, Nanyang Academy, Singapore (2009); Performing Site in Singapore, La Salle College of Art/Nanyang Academy of Art, Singapore (2009); “Engaging the Visible and (trans)visible”, Bauhaus research in Singapore (2009); 2001 “Japanese Pop Art and the Emerging Contemporary”, Otis College of Art, Los Angeles, California (2001)