Jaffa Lam Chases an Elusive Nature
Jaffa Lam. Courtesy the artist and Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Hong Kong.
Jaffa Lam. Courtesy the artist and Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Hong Kong.
There is a subtlety to Jaffa Lam's sculptures and installations which draw from the fabric of Hong Kong's history and heritage to visualise its borders today. Discarded materials from the city become the basis of large-scale works that are rather silent for all that they represent.
Crate wood, used furniture, and umbrella fabric are only some of the materials that recur within the artist's work—a habit Lam took up since her early days as an art student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where other people's discarded projects became her starting point.
These materials are already unique, as Lam states. They have their special character and the marks of someone there. This interest in the ordinary but idiosyncratic, the inherited and humane, characterise Lam's recent body of work at Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Hong Kong, as part of her solo exhibition Chasing an Elusive Nature (15 October 2022–7 January 2023).
Chasing an Elusive Nature features new sculptural works and site-specific installations spanning a range of materials from umbrella fabric to bronze and recycled crates. These works are shown alongside Lam's older pieces, tracing the artist's ongoing interest in Hong Kong's heritage, its history, and representations of collective power.
Given titles like Taishang LaoJun's Furnace (2022)—an installation of 500 rocks sculptures shaped after stones the artist collected along Hong Kong's shores—Lam's recent works connect a Chinese cultural staple—the beloved 16th-century novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, and its protagonist, Monkey King—to Hong Kong's present delimitations.
Held captive inside a furnace before being trapped under a mountain for 500 years, Monkey King was eventually reborn from a magic stone. This metaphor of journey and persistence underlies the artist's recent works, which were conceived with the idea of journey within Chinese landscape painting in mind, with many materials gathered by the artist herself during walks throughout the city.
For Lam's present exhibition, the metaphor reaches beyond the act of travel to contend with the path of existence. The artist's connections to Hong Kong's natural and urban fabric and her inner thoughts and anxieties are reflected through the medium of water. Historical connections and present concerns surface like rippling waves, doubling as a self-portrait.
After the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong in 2003, Lam turned to a socially engaged practice grounded in the politics of industrial production and the disappearance of traditional crafts. The community project Micro Economy (2009–ongoing), for instance, explored the economy of use with crate wood workers and sculptures made of recycled materials.
Alongside Micro Economy, the artist was invited to stage Jaffa Lam Laam Collaborative: Weaver at Hong Kong Arts Centre in 2013, which included collaborative works with women skilled workers from Hong Kong as an inquiry into labour, class, traditional crafts, and gender norms.
Since the pandemic, Lam's site-specific works have taken a meditative turn. The artist transforms the second room at Axel Vervoordt Gallery into an introspective space with Lost Limb Chair (2022), an armchair made of natural and industrial materials, and Meditation Tent (2022), a ceiling-bound installation of recycled umbrella fabric.
Elsewhere, water is a medium to represent the city's resilience and continuity. Sculptures mirror the depths of the ocean, from the polished stainless steel wall reliefs shaped after ocean waves as in A Piece of Good Water I (Peaceful · Surging) (2016), to its sibling made of wood, A Piece of Silence from Lying (2022). The allusion to the natural elements recalls the artist's 2017 exhibition at Sam Tung Uk Museum in Hong Kong, where a water installation placed in the middle of the courtyard mirrored the pathways of water sources arriving inland.
In this conversation edited and published in partnership with Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Jaffa Lam speaks with Hong Kong-based art writer, researcher, and curator Caroline Ha Thuc about the materials she scavenges, her detailed process, and the ways that Hong Kong's history and heritage infuse the works in her latest exhibition.
CHTYou are well known for working with recycled material, but it's not only about recycling. It's about the choice of the mundane, picking up the things around you. What drew you to recycled materials?
JLI was very poor while studying at university. When I saw something leftover in the sculpture room, the corridor, or wherever, I would ask: is anyone still working on it? If no one put their name there, it became mine and I started to work. Sometimes you will find something semi-finished and there are someone's marks there. It's something unexpected.
I hate to start things from high-quality, brand-new wood that people try to send me or ask me to carve. I always tell them I don't know how to sculpt them. I feel like they are too pretty. I don't know how to touch them. Recycled objects are not 'material' anymore, from the start. They are already unique and have their special character and are ready for me to start the conversation with them.
CHTWhat is your process like? Do you follow what the material is telling you?
JLI go through a series of processes. I first find my material, like abandoned wood or crate boxes in the old days, then I'm determined to do something. But I'm terrible with machines and not too fond of big machines, either; my studio mate knows I can't make a straight line.
My work is done with a jigsaw, so I've got limitations. I cut the material carefully; I have to follow its original form and can only change it a little. It's what I like. People would realise that I may be weaker than the material itself, so I surrender to the wood.
CHTCrate wood and pine are your favourites, but most artworks here are a combination of industrial waste—like in A Piece of Silence from Standing (2022), the fabric comes from an umbrella. How do you combine these and why? What inspired this hybrid sculpture?
JLThe sculptures start from ideas, after observations in daily life, as with the trolley. I've made many trolley works, such as Trolley Parade in Kwun Tong (2008). I pulled the trolley in, put the brake on, and played with them because I used them so often.
People use them in many ways, whether in the studio or on the street. They are very good at hilariously making trolleys to fit their purpose. That's what we call folk wisdom. I also think about how I can I use those objects from the industry.
I would say to make it simple and more spiritual, because it really represents the spirit of Hong Kong, but how do I represent this spirit? This is somehow very difficult. When I'm thinking about the trolley, it stands for the spirit of workers in this city.
CHTBehind the trolley is this idea of mobility, which is very important for you. You hang things or put them on wheels because you don't feel attached to the floor; you want to be able to escape if anything happens. Mobility is almost part of your DNA in this dimension.
JLMost people know I travel quite often. I told people I couldn't stay in Hong Kong for a year without going out. But if you asked me to live in another place, I would still prefer to sit in Lost Limb Chair, which is very heavy with only one wheel.
When I sit there, it's my home. But I can still go everywhere, and that is freedom. That's why you don't usually see my work with four legs; I feel like things must move. The wheel, for example, is like industrial water which must keep flowing and moving. And that is life, which also keeps moving.
CHTWhat is your connection to Hong Kong's territory? What about Taishang LaoJun's Furnace, which represents Hong Kong's landscape? Although you've injected a twist by moulding the stones, the work is not about the actual territory. What does it represent?
JLTaishang LaoJun's Furnace started as a joke about the marine project. Whenever I think about why people in Hong Kong care so much about the coastal line, I ask what a coastal line is. Maybe you go to Wan Chai (a commercial district), and see a map on the floor with the coastal line—but does it have meaning now? The government already filled it in.
I looked at the map and wondered if there was a very primitive site. Some questions popped up about what territory is. What is the map about? What do people really care about? That's why I started the work. I'm thinking about the city. Hong Kong is walkable, so I started by foot.
There were some places I wanted to go, but I was limited by things like club membership. I had to think about how to get to nearby locations. Sometimes I needed to go to a dirty, tiny corner to find rocks there. For me, it's like an adventure in the city.
If you think about territories, a territory is what you define, not someone else. At the end of the project, even though I had a picture of every rock and know where they are from, I decided to blend them all, and arranged them as a symbol of the tide.
These new Hong Kong rocks face the mountains outside the gallery window. It's like worship to nature and Hong Kong. Both this site and Hong Kong are places you can define as anything you want. It's always been unrestricted by territories.
CHTIn the installation, A Piece of Good Water II (Scattered · Integrating) (2017), you have mixed fake rocks with letters from Hakka houses—walled villages in southern China. Why associate the rocks and territory with these traditional values?
JLThis work is about the riverbed. When the river is dry and the water is gone, you can only see soil and rock. The couplets from the Hakka village were being thrown to the sea for ages, and no one really cared. They sank to the bottom. When the water dries at the right time, they show up.
The plan was to cast about 500 rocks and show them in the first room, but the project changed because I got news from the foundry that it would shut down. I asked the owner to make the rocks into whatever he felt like. He chose 25 rocks to cast in bronze and recycled aluminium by unique sand moulding, and I had 50 extra cast cement rocks left for A Piece of Good Water II. In terms of meaning, they are like rocks in the sea, or next to the sea.
If you think about territories, a territory is what you define, not someone else.
CHTCan you talk a bit about Somersault Cloud (2022)? You started with the scholar's rock and added maybe one cloud; then it became dozens—it keeps transforming. Is this typical of your process? How did it become the only authentic rock in the show? It's very meaningful because these rocks have their own traditional symbolism.
JLThe scholar's rock is the symbol of the elite. People always say it's a conceptual sculpture, but in the beginning, it was a very blurry image. I pulled this rock a short distance to my studio from a senior artist friend's studio. He got the rock a few decades ago from China. Now he's getting old and feels he won't do anything with it.
I felt sad; people should not own a rock because it has a longer lifespan than them. They should set it free. I felt like doing something for this abandoned rock. It is like mourning because it was super expensive but was abandoned.
Before every fight, Monkey King (Sun Wukong) puts his magic stick on the floor and says, 'Come on!' Then the magic comes. That's why I put the 'magic' stick into the rock. That was a moment I wanted to show.
I also didn't want any burden—I tried to throw away the wooden clouds, which were leftover fragments in my studio. I didn't know what to do with them. Now that I reused them, it's like a fragment of art magic.
CHTYou often talk about a quest in your practice. What are you searching for?
JLWhen we planned my solo show, Chasing an Elusive Nature (2022), Boris Vervoordt asked me, 'What do you want from this show? What will you do with the 500 rocks after?' I said I didn't know. If people accept someone without knowing but with so many trust, that is a perfect sign. Trust is an intangible, spiritual object; accumulated experience and reputation. Why do we have to know everything? I'm stubborn. I am not wise or smart. I'm just an ordinary person who has been making art for many years.
CHTWould you say that this show is a self-portrait? With all these contradictions and it's kind of a journey, but with all your question marks?
JLIt's still a question mark. For instance, when you're dying, or in the years before you die, how could you know what your next moment or next life is? You don't. But you still need to live. You don't have a choice, but you have the choice to be aware of it and enjoy it.
I came to this earth. I don't know what I'm doing or going to do in the beginning, but I arrived without choice. So, I prefer doing things step by step. My most extended plan may be five years, no more. How do you know if you will be here tomorrow? I do whatever I can now.
My work is about more than a single work—it's about the journey. That's a concept in Chinese landscape painting—how you travel, when you will stop and enjoy your time, and your time with nature and the spirit of the landscape.
This concept is in every part of my installations, every detail—it is about creating a journey. While I am still determining the end or the future, I have created the journey so there is no regret in my life.
CHTSomeone from the audience just asked about your work depicting ripples in wood—A Piece of Silence from Lying (standing mode) (2022), and how it relates to the 'Piece of Good Water' series (2016–2018). I wanted to know, are these works related to your obsession with metamorphosis? Turning wood into water is something you've tried many times.
JLWater has always been on my mind. But what kind of water? I have so much imagination. I got the inspiration for A Piece of Good Water I (Peaceful·Surging) (2016) when I looked at the sea from seven to nine in the morning in Hitachi city. The colour was metallic, like silver.
Humans, water, and nature are very close to each other—we're all in this planet. I worked for Sam Tung Uk Museum where there is a waterline along the construction. Geographically, water comes into the land from a certain direction, so I set up the water installation in the middle of the courtyard to represent the water's path.
I created five versions of 'A Piece of Good Water' (2016–2018) with different shapes, materials, and colours. They are all outcomes of my observations of water. For the first, I made the clay mould from memory.
It looked great once finished and people liked it so much, but I wasn't satisfied. I recycled the remaining wood from my last project, Touch Wood (2015), to make a wooden version of that piece. When you stand in the middle, you can see they are pretty much identical, especially the holes in wooden version and blinks of the metal, but not the same. However, the wood was still used as a material for carving.
In A Piece of Silence from Lying (2022) and Somersault Cloud (2022), wood becomes the main character. The ripples of the water and movement of the clouds follow the wood grain. The wooden plank becomes an individual creature, it becomes alive.
CHTA final question from the audience: Do you contemplate recording your process for audiences to gain a better understanding of your work? It would be difficult to know the effort you spent with the materials and process without hearing you talk about it.
JLYes and no. As I have mentioned, I am an ordinary person who makes art. I've got the perfect writer to write about that, and an awesome gallery.
I think art has a bit of mystery, just like Monkey King. Monkey King is easy to understand from a kid's perspective, but tougher from an adult's perspective—he becomes a mystery. They don't understand his behaviour. People might need to study Monkey King more, as he shows his philosophy through action.
Everyone has their profession. Mine is making art. Someone else's profession is interpretation. I very much enjoy how people reinterpret my work; it's why I asked you, Caroline, to lead today's tour. I love to be part of an audience. I would say that is also part of my practice, being an audience to my art. —[O]
