Richard Fung

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 was a professor at OCAD University.

He earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, and received a MEd in sociology and cultural studies at University of Toronto.

Fung's work in video explores the role of Asian men in gay pornography, while addressing the intersections between colonialism, immigration, racism, homophobia, and AIDS.

Many of his works have been presented at venues in Canada and the United States of America.

During the first trip, in 1962, Fung traveled from Trinidad to England with his sister Nan to meet an eminent hematologist interested in her disease.

His second trip took place in 1977 when Fung and his partner, Tim McCaskell, made a pilgrimage from Europe to Asia.

Nan died before Richard and Tim could return home.

Fung's personal accounts are riddled with love, loss, and AIDS.

He aimed to avoid sentimentality and lure the audience to feel as he does, through his video essay.

Richard uses blood to symbolize HIV/AIDS and thalassemia, as thalassalemia is an inherited blood disorder and HIV/AIDS is a viral blood infection that passes from individual to individual.

During the breakout of AIDS in the United States, those surrounding Fung in Canada often said there was no real danger to gay men in their country.

Little did Fung know, a plethora of Asian men around him were HIV+, and some even died.

Focusing specifically on racism and AIDS in the Asian community, Fung realized that their side was being ignored in the narrative that has primarily been about white gay men.

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

After directing his first film, Orientations, Fung joined the DEC Film and Video distribution in 1984 and assisted in Toronto's anti-racism film festival, Colour Positive.

Initially studying at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Fung left school and worked as a video animator at Lawrence Heights, a public housing area in Toronto.

Working with the Lawrence Heights community, Fung produced his own work and trained residents to produce their own videos.

These works were aired on the Lawrence Heights community television channel.

Fung produced his first independent video, Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians in 1984.

He produced 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.

Fung taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

He was the Chancellor's Visiting Associate Professor at University of California Irvine, a visiting assistant professor at State University of New York Buffalo and a visiting scholar at the Mass Communications Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi.

Before working at Ontario College of Art 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.

Fung served as a member on the editorial boards of Fuse and Amerasia.

He is a member of the Caribbean Contemporary Arts in Trinidad, Toronto's Images Festival, the Racial Equality Committee of the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Toronto Arts Council.

Fung is a programmer for the Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival.

A former Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University, Fung has lectured across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

He has written and published on aspects of culture and identity.

In 2021, he was one of the participants in John Greyson's experimental short documentary film International Dawn Chorus Day.

Richard Fung, along with video activists Gregg Bordowitz, Jean Carlomusto, Alexandra Juhasz, and James Wentzy, shared a goal of looking back at the historical developments in AIDS activism and its normalization in North America.

Fung produced a short documentary titled My Mother's Place (1990), a tribute 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.

Fung has been published several times in magazines such as Asiandian and Fuse.

Early on in his career Fung worked as an animator for community video production, and later became a staff producer at Rogers Cable.

Richard Fung's video essay Sea in the Blood (2000) allowed him to show his audience the seriousness of AIDS, documenting his experience of having a close family member battling thalassemia and a partner fighting AIDS.

Richard's relationship to thalassemia came about via his sister Nan, and his relationship to AIDS via his partner, Tim McCaskell.

Sea in the Blood is a reflection on race, sexuality, and disease, revolving around two trips that significantly affected his life.

In 2019, he was presented the Bonham Centre Award from The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, for his contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification.