Charlene K. Lau is an art historian, critic and curator with nearly two decades of professional experience working with artists and art institutions in Canada and internationally. She has held fellowships at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; Parsons School of Design, The New School; and Performa Biennial. Charlene has also held teaching positions at Parsons School of Design, OCAD University, Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Toronto Scarborough, Western University and York University. Her scholarly voice and curatorial work have been featured in The Guardian, PAPER, The Goods by Vox and The New Yorker; her scholarly writing has been published in Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, Fashion Theory and Journal of Curatorial Studies and in the edited anthologies The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies (2021) and Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the Contemporary: Local Contexts and Global Practices (Routledge, 2018). She has written art criticism for publications including Art in America, Artforum, TheAtlantic.com, The Brooklyn Rail, C Magazine, Canadian Art and frieze, among others.

Charlene's research interests include the contemporary avant-garde in art, fashion and new media, Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), futurity and transgression. She holds a PhD in Art History and Visual Culture (York University), an MA in the History and Culture of Fashion (London College of Fashion), and a BA in Art History and Visual Studies (University of Toronto).