ARTFORMS

Installations, video, app, sculptures.

MATERIALS / MEDIA

Using technologies including virtual reality and 3D scanning, she connects the viewer to her family history through technological innovation. Or as Nordic Art review puts it: ”Lap-See Lam demonstrates the advantages that transhumanism, technocapitalism, and post-internet art have in common.”

GUIDING INTEREST

Lap-See Lam explores questions of identity and cultural constructs through the history of her own cultural background. As the daughter of Chinese Cantonese immigrants, she uses the family’s history as a source of inspiration for her work. More specifically, her parentes and grandmother owned a Chinese restaurant for 30 years, and traces from that environment becomes the interface she uses to address questions of navigating cultural in-betweens.

QUOTES

”The Chinese restaurant is a trace of a wider global Chinese diaspora – a trace that is both something familiar in our cities, but at the same time holds the identity of ‘the oriental other’. The difference between the local guest and the ‘serving-other’ is a dichotomy that has been central to the creation of this type of business. As a second-generation Canto-Swede, I find myself navigating these cultural in-betweens, with access to both the internal and external gaze.” /Lap-See Lam in C Print magazine, 2018 

”As viewers, we travel through the glitchy Chinese restaurant landscape like deterritorialized cursed ghosts in a wrecked time ship. The exoticization of Imperial China’s horror vacui aesthetics with pagodas, coiled screen walls, dragons, flowers, silk textiles, peacocks, lanterns, and porcelain vases is elevated to nearly sublime dimensions, where the technological ruin Romanticism is amplified by irritating glitches and software bugs.” /Nordic Art Review, 2019

FORMATION

2018 – 2020｜MFA, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm

2013 – 2016｜BFA, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm

2011 – 2013｜Idun Lovén Art School, Stockholm

LINKS

Lap-See Lam

Nordic Art Review

Luleå-biennalen

Magasin III

BIO

Born 1990 in Sweden. Educated at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Represented by Galleri Nordenhake in Stockholm.

Photo: Margareta Bloom Sandebäck from the magazine Konstnären

EXAMPLE OF WORK

Mother’s Tongue (2018)

Mother’s Tongue is a retro futuristic video workmade in collaboration with film maker Wingyee Wu, and produced by Mossutställningar. The story is the visual fictive stories of three women working in a Chinese restaurant, living in the past, present (2018) and future (2058). The visuals are made of 3D laser scans of real restaurants and experienced through an app.

Inspired by the framework of a tourist guide app, the wiever is guided by a voice over narrative. ”the subjective consciousness belonging to the Chinese restaurant, a ghost from the future. /…/ What happens if a place of projection suddenly looks back at us? Lap-See Lam asks.

Photos: Anna Drvnik and Lap-See Lam

The Phantom Banquet (2019)

Through a 3d scanning tool Lap-See Lam has recreated interiors from her family’s Chinese restaurants. 

Photos: Lap-See Lam

I’m a freelancing designer and an Program manager and senoir lecturer/Assistant Professor in Graphic Design and Visual Communications at Beckmans College of Design. I’m one of the founders of Hall of Femmes, an initiative to highlight the work of women in the field of art direction and graphic design.

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

I’m interested in connection – connecting people to complex questions through design and art as well as connecting people to each other through these experiences. Through my work as a designer I’ve tried to broaden the perspectives of who is heard, seen, recognised and by so hopefully contributing to a more vivid design scene and history. Who and what can belong to a field of art, to its history, to certain questions, rooms and interpretations? My personal background as a child of two cultures has made me interested in cross cultural/mixed/double gazes, experiences and ”inbetweenness”, adding more complex narratives to how to see the world. I’m also interested in methods and collaborations, what I see as the infrastructures behind making great work.

SELECTED WORK

Hall of Femmes (2009–) aims to revise the history of design and inspire and raise awareness of gender equality within design, architecture and communication. The project was founded in 2009 with Angela Tillman Sperandio and includes lectures, exhibitions, podcasts, seminars and a book series, each book portraying a designer and her work through in-depth interviews and previously unpublished images. Women’s  contribution to the development of the profession had not been documented or had enough recognition, something HoF wants to change. In May 2013, Hall of Femmes produced a two-day design conference held at Moderna Museet in Stockholm with prominent speakers from the world of visual arts, communication and fashion. Invited speakers at the conference were: Barbara Kruger, Ruth Ansel, Janet Froelich, Ann-Sofie Back and Lucy Mc Rae to name a few.
Web page

Vi Gör Vad Vi Kan/ We Do What We Can (2015–2019) was a help relief organization started by a group of citizens, to provide aid to refugees arriving at the Greek island of Lesvos. 10 million Sek and equipment was collected and distributed to local initiatives working with health, hygiene, teaching and protection.

Centan (2017–2020). A local bistro started in 2017. My role was in design and communication as well as being the creative director of different kinds of collaborations with the local community, such as design commissions to the local school students and other local creatives and craftspeople.
Web
Instagram

Hjärta Smärta (2001–2011) was an award winning graphic design studio, established in 2001 by Angela Tillman Sperandio and me. The studio worked with a wide range of commissions – from identities to exhibition graphics and book design, but also with self initiated projects like Hall of Femmes. Hjärta Smärtas’ work is represented in the permanent collections of Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and The Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg.

TEACHING

I’m the head of the Visual Communication program at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, where I also teach courses in graphic design.
Web page

BIO

Swedish-Tunisian designer, teacher and publisher. Born in Sweden 1975. Worked within the field of design since 2001.

FORMATION

Vrå Höjskole, preparation art course, Denmark 2005

Art History, Stockholm university, 1998–99

Culture Sociology, Malmö högskola, distance, 1998

Forsbergs school, graphic design, Stockholm, 1999–2001

Art & Architecture, course, Kungliga Konsthögskolan, Stockholm, 2002

Design thinking for educators, 2016

Citizens Sweden, community organizing, 2016

EXHIBITIONS

Ung svensk form, 2001–2002

Alphabet: an Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography, USA 2005¬2006

Konceptdesign, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm 2005

Vårsalongen Formbart, Liljevachs Konsthall, Stockholm, 2005

Tokyo Hipster Club, Tokyo, 2005

Civic Matters, Los Angeles, 2006

Den handfasta rörelsen, Liljevachs Konsthall, Stockholm, 2008

LINKS

Hall of Femmes

Beckmans College of Design

Centan

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon Talks About Sea Ranch Supergraphics from halloffemmes on Vimeo.

The realization of Barbara Stauffacher Solomon’s supergraphic @ Centan, Bagarmossen, Sweden from halloffemmes on Vimeo.