Karen Tam 譚嘉文 is artist and curator who examines the constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities through immersive installations.
2025 Biennial Year Find out more
Karen Tam 譚嘉文 creates immersive installations, recreating spaces such as Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops, and other sites of cultural encounters. Since 2000, Tam’s work has been exhibited internationally in North America, Europe, and China, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum, He Xiangning Art Museum, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Deutsche Börse Residency at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and the Toronto Biennial of Art.
Tam has received numerous grants and fellowships from the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts du Québec, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her exhibition, Swallowing Mountains, presented by the McCord Stewart Museum, received Honourable Mention at the 2024 Canadian Museums Association Awards. She was also the winner of the 2021 Giverny Capital Prize awarded by the Fondation Giverny pour l’art contemporain, a finalist for the 2017 Louis-Comtois Prize and the 2016 Prix en art actuel from the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, and long-listed for the 2010 and 2016 Sobey Art Awards.
Tam holds an MFA in Sculpture (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and a PhD in Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths, University of London). She is the Adjunct Curator at Griffin Art Projects and has contributed to publications on Chinese art and consumerism. Her work is in collections including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the Microsoft Art Collection. She is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau.
Liverpool Biennial 2025
'Scent of Thunderbolts 雷霆之息', 2024
Through her multi-disciplinary work, Karen Tam examines how stereotypes and opinions of cultures and communities are imagined and influenced. In particular, she often recreates spaces and adopts traditions from Chinese culture to question how we understand history, whose histories get to be collected and how they are told, and to interrogate the narratives that have been constructed around the Chinese diaspora. Tam asks, “How do we remember, represent, support, and simultaneously deny the erasures of our stories, spaces, and community?”
‘Scent of Thunderbolts’ addresses Chinese diasporic sonic memory in the form of a Cantonese opera stage. The work draws inspiration from archival materials and conversations with community members, integrating reimagined elements from Cantonese opera including props, stage settings, backdrops and furniture.
Through her multi-disciplinary work, Karen Tam examines how stereotypes and opinions of cultures and communities are imagined and influenced. In particular, she often recreates spaces and adopts traditions from Chinese culture to question how we understand history, whose histories get to be collected and how they are told, and to interrogate the narratives that have been constructed around the Chinese diaspora. Tam asks, “How do we remember, represent, support, and simultaneously deny the erasures of our stories, spaces, and community?” ‘Scent of Thunderbolts’ addresses Chinese diasporic sonic memory in the form of a Cantonese opera stage. The work draws inspiration from archival materials and conversations with community members, integrating reimagined elements from Cantonese opera including props, stage settings, backdrops and furniture. Visitors are invited to walk across the stage and explore the space, finding their way between room dividers and a variety of printed backdrops. The latter have been designed to evoke the ambiance of early Chinese Canadian photography studios such as the studio of Yucho Chow, Vancouver’s first and most prolific Chinese photographer. The audio incorporates Cantonese opera recordings from the 1940’s and 1950’s, alongside soundscapes of interior Chinatown spaces. This layering of different sounds from a range of sources, some historic and some contemporary, attempts to document the intangible elements of these sites and examines how diasporic communities shape their own spaces. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Hugues Charbonneau. Supported by Québec Government Office, London. With thanks to Aroma Cantonese Opera Troupe and esea contemporary, Mi Lang from Liverpool City Council, Gina Tsang from Pine Court Housing Residents Association and Zi Lan from Pagoda Arts. Originally commissioned for Toronto Biennial of Art 2024.
'Scent of Thunderbolts 雷霆之息', 2024
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Karen Tam 譚嘉文, ‘Scent of Thunderbolts 雷霆之息’, 2024. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Pine Court. Photography by Mark McNulty.
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Karen Tam 譚嘉文, ‘Scent of Thunderbolts 雷霆之息’, 2024. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Pine Court. Photography by Mark McNulty.
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Karen Tam 譚嘉文, ‘Scent of Thunderbolts 雷霆之息’, 2024. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Pine Court. Photography by Mark McNulty.
Venue
Walker Art Gallery
William Brown Street, Liverpool, L3 8ELAccess facilities available
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