Lap-See Lam Tales of the Altersea (Dahlia)

Focus, February 12, 2024

Lap-See Lam has been invited to create an ambitious multi-modal installation for the Nordic Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (20 April – 24 November 2024). Conceived and conceptualised by Lam and in collaboration with an array of other creatives, in particular artist Kholod Hawash (Finland) and composer Tze Yeung Ho (Norway), The Altersea Opera is a poetic exploration of the existential implications of displacement and belonging which veers between the real and the imaginary to tell a story about the desire to stay and the need to move on.

At Galerie Nordenhake focus Lap-See Lam presents a character from an earlier chapter in her ongoing expansive narrative. Tales of the Altersea (Dahlia) was first presented in the exhibition Tales of the Altersea at Portikus, Frankfurt. The core of the exhibition was an eponymous ten-channel video projection that submerged viewers in a shadow play and was later presented at the Swiss Institute, New York.

Tales of the Altersea, as told by the artist, centres around the Sea Palace, a dragon-shaped, three-story floating restaurant that sailed from Shanghai to Europe in the early 1990s. Now retired, the ship served as a haunted house at Stockholm's Gröna Lund amusement park until recently.

Dahlia (2023), the ghostly green neon figure floating below the ceiling at focus bears the name of one of the protagonists in Lam’s tale. The story follows Dahlia and her twin sister Julie across a journey of adventure and discovery as they swim toward the wreck of the Sea Palace and encounter a series of characters born out of Cantonese history and mythology.

For the Nordic Countries Pavilion at the upcoming 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia (20 April - 24 November 2024) Lap-See Lam has been invited by Moderna Museet to create an ambitious multi-modal installation - The Altersea Opera. In collaboration with Asrin Haidari, curator of Swedish and Nordic Art at the museum, Lam has extended the invitation to artist Kholod Hawash (Finland) and composer Tze Yeung Ho (Norway), and an international ensemble of collaborators ranging from singers, costume designers and filmmakers to interpreters and a certified bamboo scaffold engineer.  

Recent solo exhibitions include Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo NY; the Swiss Institute, New York City; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (all 2023); Bonniers Konsthall (2022); Trondheim Kunstmuseum (2021); Moderna Museet Malmö (2018–2019); and Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2022, 2018). Tales of the Altersea was exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki as part of the Ars Fennica 2023 exhibition. She has taken part in group exhibitions at venues including Ghost 2565, Bangkok (2022); KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2022); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2021); PinchukArtCentre (2021); Performa 19 in New York (2019); Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris (2019); Luleå Biennial (2018); Kópavogur Art Museum, Kópavogur (2018); and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2017). Lam was the winner of Dagens Nyheter Culture Prize in 2021 and a recipient of the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation Grant in 2017. In 2021 she was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize. She was nominated for the Ars Fennica Award 2023.