Concordian nominated for prestigious contemporary art award

Concordia beginnings

Tam says she had lifelong aspirations to become an artist. When she started in Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts, she majored in painting and drawing before switching to studio arts, with a minor in music.

Along the way she won several scholarships for her work.

The native Montrealer then headed south and earned an MFA in sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002, before furthering her education at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the United Kingdom. In 2014 Tam completed her PhD in cultural studies.

By then, her career as an artist was already in full swing. “While I was in London, I was going back and forth a lot between doing shows and residencies in Canada and in Europe. I was keeping busy, both exhibiting and doing artwork while getting my PhD,” she says.

“I am just sort of running with things now. It would be really nice if I could teach. I have some shows lined up for the next two years. The preparation for that takes a really long time, but if any teaching opportunity were to come up, I would take it.”

Over last few years, Tam has returned to her sculpture roots by creating, for example, antique porcelain vase replicas out of paper mâché or silver objects out of aluminum trays. She also does paper and wood cutting, in work related to traditional Chinese paper cutting.

She pursues these shorter projects while working on her time-consuming, life-size installations that art lovers can walk through, such as a karaoke bar or curio shop.

For an exhibition last summer in Peterborough, Ont., Tam recreated a Chinatown souvenir shop from the 1930s and ’40s. Her show, called “Terra dos Chinês Curio Shop,” incorporated objects she found, bought or fabricated using a variety of different materials, to the point that it was almost impossible for viewers to pick out which objects she created herself and which were the real thing.

“Installations come out of sculpture: it’s the creation of an environment that touches upon architecture and could involve all of your senses,” Tam explains. “I feel the need to just make art, and I have a long list of projects I want to finish.”