{"id":14189,"date":"2017-06-14T09:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=14189"},"modified":"2017-06-12T12:54:49","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T19:54:49","slug":"tam-showcases-works-of-nam-at-new-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2017\/06\/14\/tam-showcases-works-of-nam-at-new-exhibit\/","title":{"rendered":"Tam showcases works of Nam at new exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some artists, no matter how talented they are, will end up forgotten. But rediscovering them can yield some incredible artwork and history. Montreal\u2019s Karen Tam recently learned of a Chinese artist who was friends with Emily Carr; Tam has now put together an exhibit to honour that artist\u2014Lee Nam\u2014and his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only know about him because of mentions of him through [Carr\u2019s] journals,\u201d says Tam. \u201cShe had several entries where she described meeting him and where he did his work. I used her descriptions as a starting point to think and look about immigrate artists in Canada. I collaborated with another Montreal-based artist who does Chinese brush art to reimagine Nam\u2019s work, as well as his own experiences with Canada\u2019s landscape and how he painted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Karen Tam\u2019s new exhibit honours artist Lee Nam and his work; Nam was friends with Emily Carr (photo by Troy Mamer).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tam, intrigued by Nam, decided to dig further into his work as well as his connection with Carr. Tam found herself at the UVic archives looking for any link between the two that she could find. Eventually, Tam found what she was looking for\u2014a piece of art\u2014and has used it in her exhibit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an image of a group of chickens,\u201d she says. \u201cI asked my mother, as well as other collaborators, to help paint some sketches. We have about 300 sketches of birds, some of which are chickens. We then linked that to the exhibit by having a video that shows how to paint these chickens. Then viewers can go try their hand at painting chickens in the style of Lee Nam.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Tam\u2019s platoon of bird sketches won\u2019t be the only thing on display at the art gallery. She says that she\u2019s expanded the exhibit to be inclusive, as Carr was toward Nam when they first met.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve also welcomed a few local artists in the community to include one or two of their paintings alongside other Chinese paintings,\u201d says Tam. \u201cAlso on display are some of Emily Carr\u2019s paintings. In one of her journal entries she explained how she traded paintings with Lee Nam. I thought that was quite interesting because if Nam had returned to China, maybe there are one or two Emily Carrs that we don\u2019t know about that are in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tam\u2019s original goal was to focus on and bring awareness to Nam. After researching Nam, Tam realized that there is so much more to get out of his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there are a lot of points where people can connect with, either through Chinese art or Emily Carr,\u201d says Tam. \u201cI also wanted to look at if immigrant artists were being included in Canadian art history, but that turned back into itself, and I thought that they may not be in Chinese art history either. I hope that people take away a more mindful sense of inclusion and what could\u2019ve possibly been left out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tam says that although she had a lot of time to research Nam, it turned out to be quite difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe discovered that he spelled his name two different ways, which made things a lot harder,\u201d says Tam. \u201cIn addition, I also looked at federal immigration records, which weren\u2019t complete. We don\u2019t even know how he wrote his name in Chinese\u2014Lee Nam might\u2019ve been his pen name. It\u2019s frustrating but also opens up a lot to the imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some artists, no matter how talented they are, will end up forgotten. But rediscovering them can yield some incredible artwork and history. Montreal\u2019s Karen Tam recently learned of a Chinese artist who was friends with Emily Carr; Tam has now put together an exhibit to honour that artist\u2014Lee Nam\u2014and his work. \u201cWe only know about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-june-14-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14192,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14189\/revisions\/14192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}