Ostracized as an unconventional and not-yet-success\u00adful female artist within a dully provincial Victoria, Carr may have considered Nam a \u201cfellow outsider\u201d and artistic peer, as the curatorial text introducing Tam\u2019s exhibition suggests. The text also mentions that Carr, having observed Nam\u2019s brush painting technique, started using paint thinned with gasoline on paper to allow for a quicker application of colour, marking a shift toward the expressive style, with its many \u201cswirls, flutters, streaks, sweeps, and dabs,\u201d that she would become known for in her later career.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Dennis Reid, A Concise History of Canadian Painting, Second Edition<\/em> (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1988), 162.<\/span> Despite her genuine interest in Nam\u2019s paintings, parallels can be made with the primitivist proclivities of other late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century artists (Gauguin, Picasso, et al.) who appropriated motifs and mark-making from African, Asian, and Oceanic material culture as a way of revitalizing their art practices and rebelling against art academicism. (Indeed, Carr\u2019s depictions of Haida totem poles have been critiqued as problematic acts of cultural appropriation.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike Nam, Carr began having her work shown by prestigious galleries and gained recognition by the mid-1930s, eventually attaining her current iconic status in twentieth-century Canadian painting\u200a\u2014\u200aher artworks represented in countless exhibitions and collections and selling posthumously for millions of dollars by the 2000s. Did she champion Nam\u2019s work or his influence on her work as her own success grew? Tam chooses not to dwell directly on Carr\u2019s privilege and other inequities, and focuses instead on conjuring up what Carr called Nam\u2019s \u201cbeautiful watercolours done in Oriental style.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Ibid., 117.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n With wings like clouds from the sky<\/em> \u5927\u9d6c\u5c31\u632f\u7ffc opens with a small drawing of chickens attributed to either Carr or Nam. This diminutive work acts as a kind of catalyst for dozens of other drawings of roosters and chickens done in black and red ink and hung from the ceiling. The mark-making is vigorous and energetic in style\u200a\u2014\u200afrom the paintings fluttering above, viewers can easily imagine the hustle-and-bustle of a feathered brood. They were made in the Chinese brush paint\u00ading style epitomized by the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting<\/em> (1679\u200a\u2013\u200a1701), a handbook that details how to draw everything from bamboo trees and orchids to birds and mammals in the styles of various masters. In addition to outlining specific painting techniques, the manual frames these techniques within such fundamental philosophical and spiritual concepts as Yin and Yang, Tao, and Qi. Even today, this early Qing dynasty tome remains a teaching tool for beginners. In her introduction to a book featuring a selection of excerpts from the Mustard Seed Garden<\/em> Manual<\/em>, Mai-Mai Sze acknowledges that the Chinese tradition of painting may have a reputation in some circles of being rigidly transmitted, but argues that \u201cits prime characteristic is adaptability. It is not inflexible, or it never could have survived. [\u2026] Each generation might be said to have used the tradition in its own way, modifying it to suit its needs.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Mai-Mai Sze, The Way of Chinese Painting: Its Ideas and Techniques\u200a\u2014\u200aWith Selections from the Seventeenth-Century Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting<\/em> (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), 4.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tam pays tribute to Nam by vividly imagining his Chinatown studio in an installation titled Flying Cormorant Studio (for Lee Nam)<\/em>: a comfortable room filled with books on Chinese and European painting, stacks of unframed drawings, scroll paintings on the walls, jars of brushes and ink sticks, seals, and even a piano. She envisions him as an active teacher with his own art school and students: a table is set up for viewers to make their own drawings in response to a video, which features Tam\u2019s drawing teacher, Lui Luk Chun (whose works are also hung about the studio), demonstrating how to paint a chicken. These are added to other paintings hung from the ceiling\u200a\u2014\u200aan installation that steadily grows throughout the exhibition\u2019s duration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resigning herself to the paucity of information available on Nam (one of the more poignant parts of the exhibition is a series of ghostly drawings by Tam based on archival documentation of immigrants to Canada with the same name as Nam during the early twentieth century), Tam\u2019s apparent aim leans perhaps more toward critiquing the system that obstructed his artistic ambitions. She also responds to the discrimination faced by Nam (and other immigrants past and present) by showcasing on the gallery walls landscape paintings made in Chinese ink wash style, including a selection of works by Chinese-Canadian artists living in Victoria, works from the gallery\u2019s collection, and, pointedly, a few of Carr\u2019s paintings. In this way, she both imagines the scope of Nam\u2019s unrealized legacy and underscores the malleability of Chinese brush painting as described by Sze by positioning its contemporary iterations within a Canadian context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the start of her career Tam has examined histories of orientalism, racism, and discrimination faced by many Chinese immigrants. Her sense of play and her emphasis on the viewer\u2019s participation and pleasure distinguish her treatment of the complex questions percolating through her art practice. Grounded in Tam\u2019s refusal to sacrifice aesthetic concerns over content, her visually seductive work compels viewers to consider, for instance, the contributions of Chinese immigrants to mainstream Canadian cuisine in her detail-perfect Gold Mountain Restaurant<\/em> installations, or to reflect on the impacts of imperialism in her blue and white papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 \u201cporcelain\u201d series. It is the light touch juxtaposed with heavy subject matter\u200a\u2014\u200ain this case the marginalization of a Chinese-Canadian artist full of potential and his near erasure from history\u200a\u2014\u200athat makes With wings like clouds hung from the sky<\/em> \u5927\u9d6c\u5c31\u632f\u7ffc unique in tone. And within the current geopolitical climate, in which anti-immigrant discourse is on the rise, this exhibition feels particularly vital in its response to the historical void around an artist like Lee Nam. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The author thanks Antonio Loro for his helpful feedback on this essay.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Karen](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/92_AC02_Chan_Karen-Tam_With-wings-like-clouds-hung-from-the-sky_02-2-scaled.jpg\")
With wings like clouds hung from the sky <\/em>\u5927\u9d6c\u5c31\u632f\u7ffc, installation view, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2017.
Photos : Mike McLean, courtesy of the artist and Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Karen](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/92_AC02_Chan_Karen-Tam_With-wings-like-clouds-hung-from-the-sky_03-2-scaled.jpg\")
With wings like clouds hung from the sky <\/em>\u5927\u9d6c\u5c31\u632f\u7ffc, installation view and detail, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2017.
Photos : Mike McLean, courtesy of the artist and Art Gallery of Greater Victoria<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n