Jaffa Lam

Jaffa Lam Laam (born 1973) is a Chinese visual artist. She is known for her mixed-media sculptures and site-specific works that inquire into Hong Kong culture and history. Lam often uses recycled materials such as found fabric or wood from construction sites. She began focusing on community engagement and socially responsible art at the time of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong in 2003. And since then, she has created many community-driven projects in Hong Kong and abroad. In 2006, she received the Asian Cultural Council's Desiree and Hans Michael Jebsen Fellowship. Her works have been acquired by public institutions, including Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lam is also known as an educator. She is currently Academic Head at the Hong Kong Art School.

Early life She was born in 1973 in Fujian, People's Republic of China. She migrated to Hong Kong in 1985 (at 12 years old) and continued her study there. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts, and postgraduate diploma in education from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She sculpted in wood, metals and glass, and created more expansive installations from items such as cough-drop tins, tree branches, and string. Some of her more avant-garde sculptures were object dialogues created at a residency in Hualien, Taiwan in 2003, or the ornate mosquito nets she sewed the following year on a cultural exchange with women in a Kenyan village.

Selected works Lam's practice focuses on socially engaged art. She stated, "During SARS in 2003, I felt strongly the power of collective sadness and anxiety, and I decided to respond this feeling." Speaking about her projects that involve workers from different industries in Hong Kong, the artist says, "I'm neither a fighter nor a social activist. . . What I do is only raising attention [. . . for] invisible people."

Micro Economy (2009-ongoing) is a community-driven project that involves garment and crate wood workers. The project features large-scale sculptural objects using discarded or recycled materials such as old fabric, leftover crate wood, and scrap metal. It questions the economy shaped around the idea of "use."

Bleaching is another collaborative work, where Lam worked with members of the Hong Kong Women Workers' Association, using pieces of fabric to create surfaces that act as tents and projection surfaces at the same time.

Jaffa Lam Laam Collaborative: Weaver (2013) is a community art project that involves women from grassroots organizations as co-creators of artworks. Hosted at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 2013, the project includes seventeen works, including wood, fabric and found objects as well as her collaborative work with marginalized skilled laborers in Hong Kong. The project explores the relationship between traditional craft and traditional gender norms, as well as labor and class for women in Hong Kong. This project was shown to represent Hong Kong at the Setouchi Triennale in 2013.

Lam's mixed-media installation work, Rocking in Mini Zen Garden (2020), was part of the disCONNECT HK exhibition of pandemic-related artwork. Lam collected rocks by her home which is near a quarantine camp. The rocks remind her of mountains which she imagines summiting. She traces her path with thread and illuminates it with UV lights. By installing the artwork in a toilet in an historical tenement building, Lam attempts to create a safe space amidst uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Christina Yuen Zi Chung, a PhD scholar in Feminist Studies at the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department of the University of Washington, discusses how Lam creates work with a feminist consciousness and uses her work to reimagine a language for feminism for Hong Kong-based artists.

Exhibitions

Lam's solo exhibitions include Chasing an Elusive Nature, Axel Vervoordt Gallery (2022);