Vunkwan Tam
Hong Kong

The circulation of global capital often results in an exchange of objects and symbols that connects the internet and the physical world. It is also a transfer that informs Vunkwan Tam’s artistic practice. The Hong Kong-based artist is known for his installations of marginally adjusted readymade artifacts found on the streets or purchased online, and the objects’ removal from their original context, the way in which Tam processes and works with them, and their placement within the gallery space evoke a unified force that is bleak, shadowy, and tarnished. 

Tam’s first solo exhibition, “F,” at Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery in 2022, refers to the internet meme “press F to pay respects” that originated from the first-person shooter video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014). This decontextualization of symbols and semiotics in meme culture is fundamental to Tam’s artistic practice as in, for example, Untitled (00044 N.O.W.R.F.Y.H.) (2020), in which he placed a 19th-century North African sword purchased online against a black wall under a spotlight and turned it into a blank medium of reimagination, its unknown history haunting its presence.