Join Professor Eugene Y. Wang, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University and Founding Director of CAMLab, for “The Painter’s Brain: Towards a Cognitive Art History,” the June and Simon Li Distinguished Lecture in the History of Art at the University of Oxford on October 28, 2026.

 It is rare for an artist to paint her own brain. Yet Irene Chou (1924–2011), a leading Hong Kong ink painter, did just that. Confronted with an X-ray confirming her diagnosis of cerebellar atrophy, Chou recognized within its branching patterns an image of her own life. Her artistic engagement with trees had begun decades earlier, through her practice of sketching “ten thousand trees” in Hong Kong’s forests.

 In this lecture, Professor Wang traces how Chou’s evolving artistic practice weaves together calligraphic lines, meditative breathing, childhood memories, and modern brain scans. Through the lens of cognitive art history, he examines how her paintings challenge the notion of a self-contained individual, revealing instead a relational self in which the biological brain, technology, memory, landscape, and psychocosmic forces co-emerge. Chou’s work offers a compelling example of how physical vulnerability and personal trauma can be transformed into an affirmative vision of resilience, healing, and becoming, opening new possibilities for cognitive art history and the New Humanities.

The lecture is presented by the University of Oxford’s Department of History of Art and generously supported by June and Simon Li.