Jaffa Lam

Venue: Kyu Yamakano

Curator’s Text: Title: 《Seek Your Mountain》

This tent- or umbrella-like installation fragmentizes the viewers’ visual perception of a given scene. Placed on the rooftop of an abandoned building located in an old factory site that seems misplaced in the scenic view, this installation surely disassembles the scenic landscape of Mt. Fuji, cutting it up with its unique and bizarre angles. It invites viewers to revisit what we are used to seeing, review with fresh eyes, and reexamine our view with a new perspective. Art is about this specificity of a viewpoint, the uniqueness of a perspective.
Collected from Fujiyoshida city’s weavers, the fabric used for this installation is called B TAN, a lower-quality weave with frays that cannot be put on the market: the artist’s sincere response to sustainability, continued from her resourcefulness in the use of fabric taken off of recycled umbrellas for her early works exhibited in Hong Kong. It is clear that environmental problems are the theme that runs throughout this group of works. Currently, Lam is represented by Axel Vervoordt Gallery known for their wabi-sabi aesthetics in Europe, and she had a first solo exhibition in their headquarters in Antwerp in 2023.

Artist Profile: Jaffa Lam
Jaffa Lam (b. 1973, China) is a sculptor specializing in large-scale site-specific works of mixed-media sculptures and installations, which are primarily made with recycled materials. She is interested in non-verbal conversations and dialogues exploring issues related to local history, culture and current affairs. She contemplates themes such as public art, loss and revival of traditional craftsmanship, the cycle of human beings and objects, and capturing seemingly trivial human stories in the greater flow of history.

Lam has been invited to take part in many international shows, including Setouchi Triennale (Japan,2013) , Hong Kong Week (Taiwan MOCA,2015), A New Dynasty- Created in China(Aros Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark,2015), Wuzhen International Contemporary Art Exhibition (China,2016) and Lyon Lumières (France,2018), as well as various artist residency programmes in Bangladesh, Canada, China, France, Japan, Kenya, Myanmar, Philippines, Taiwan, Switzerland and United States, etc.

Most recently, Lam’s site-specific installation appeared at Art Basel Hong Kong’s Encounters sector in 2023. Hovering in the air, the socially engaging installation consists of a 14-metre-patchwork made of recycled umbrella fabric, merged from the extensions of six sculptures made of industrial trolleys. Described by the artist as “an art fair oasis”, it demonstrates the issues of labour, identity, and collectiveness of the city.

https://www.jaffalam.com/