As the first non-Chinese guest editor of the bi-lingual contemporary art magazine Art.Zip, Lyons compiled and commissioned a selection of texts, interviews and reviews focusing on the theme of translation. The issue was designed to physically and conceptually hinge around a Chinese calligraphic translation of Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘Chinese Curios’, highlighting cultural differences through the content and graphic layout of the bi-lingual texts.

As well as overseeing the overall layout of the issue, Lyons guided the translations of ‘Chinese Curios’, an essay by Geoff Dyer and an interview with artist Song Dong. She commissioned the cover artwork, and a photo essay on Beijing nightlife by Helen Couchman. In addition to her editorial work, Lyons commissioned a special edition foldout print by the artist Margarita Gluzberg and wrote an accompanying essay, ‘Her Dark Materials.’ In this essay, Lyons unpacks the artist’s term of the ‘consumystic,’ a hybrid concept that conflates desire, consumption and the mystical. Exploring the dynamics and material processes that drive Gluzberg’s practice, Lyons draws together literary characters to communicate the dynamics at work in Gluzberg’s photographs.

25,000 copies of the special edition of Art.Zip was distributed throughout museums in China, including: Today Art Museum, National Museum of China, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Inside-out Art Museum, Sichuan Art Museum, Tianjin Art Museum, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Guangdong Museum of Arts, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai Zhengda Art Museum and Minsheng Art Museum. The issue is held in the library collections of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, Academy of Art & Design, Tsinghua University, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, China Academy of Fine Art, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and Luxun Academy of Fine Arts.