Hong Kong: Jaffa Lam

REVIEWS

HONG KONG

Hong Kong Arts Centre

Jaffa Lam

Weaver

Jaffa Lam’s collaborative exhibition, “Weaver,” at the Hong Kong Arts Centre submerged the unwary visitor in an experiential journey of transformation. Seventeen works in mixed media, including wood, fabric and found objects, were arranged on three levels in a series of linked environments, in which Lam intermittently wove subtle effects of sound and light—developed with artist Anthony Yeung and lighting designer Cheung So-Yi—that added another textural layer to the experience.

Filling the first gallery was Lam’s luminous site-specific installation, Blue Heaven (2012–13), a billowing, blue canopy floating in midair. The work’s rippling contours, hung low in the front and rising up toward the back, created the sensation of being caught under a huge wave. Like the sea, the blueness of the canopy was variegated, ranging from the dark purple of a bruise to the lightest cerulean, with a patch of sunlit translucence that revealed the presence of a window far above the installation overlooking Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour.

The “materiality” of Lam’s works is never just about physicality: built into every work are fragments of the sociopolitical fabric from which the material is “cut.” Embedded in the material of Blue Heaven were incongruous logos and odd little patterns and discolorations fashioned from innumerable broken and discarded umbrellas gathered from dustbins all over Hong Kong. The installation was one of 11 exhibited works from “Micro-Economy” (2009– ), a series through which Lam seeks to honor, revitalize and “alchemize” what Hong Kong society has cast off in the course of its socioeconomic “progress.” In “Micro-Economy,” Lam works primarily with discards: old fabric, leftover crate wood and scrap metal, but also people. In many projects, including Blue Heaven, Lam collaborates with former textile workers now affiliated with the Hong Kong Women’s Workers Association, which seeks to empower skilled unemployed workers.

In contrast to the floating ambiguity of Blue Heaven, Bridge (2012–13) posed a clear statement. A long, flat structure formed of interconnected crate-wood panels, the installation was carved with hundreds of Chinese characters in formal Song-style script. The text was, in fact, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, carved on by many different hands. Bridge invites people to donate a sum to a fund—aimed at helping the project travel to different venues—and, in return, lets them hand-carve their names onto its declaration.

On the next gallery level was a series of fantastical tree sculptures, which Lam carved out of crate wood and shaded with what she calls a “skin” of pencil markings. A Quarter of Cityscape (2011), created from one-fourth of an abandoned mahjong table—its green baize surface graced by a small sensuous tree, like a strange bonsai—was lit from within and seemed to glow with subterranean sunlight. Lam sees this work as speaking to what remains of Hong Kong’s original cityscape, such as the tong lau buildings hidden between the towering, steel-and-glass monsters.

The exhibition’s final level was a stark space lit by a cold, blue light. Hanging Moon (2012–13), a huge, dusky sphere, was suspended in midair and echoed on the floor by a gigantic painted shadow. Lam created the sphere from wooden rings stacked to the exact height of her body. The work’s exterior is covered entirely with layers of various pencil markings, running into and over each other, creating a wild surface whose cathartic momentum seemed born of conflicting emotions. This was the most personal of Lam’s works in the show: in the catalog, she describes the moon as “a projection of my state of mind as an artist.”

Lam’s quietly powerful show revealed an intricate interweaving of threads spooled from the dichotomous states of solitude and communal activism. The artist has said that her emphasis on salvage and collaboration is partly rooted in her own past experiences as a mainland immigrant and part-time factory worker. Technical brilliance creates the frame for her art, but social compassion and its concomitant brand of inventiveness are part of the warp and weft of its fabric.

VALERIE DORAN