Karen Tam: Birds of a Feather

It all started with an ink drawing of four chickens originally attributed to Emily Carr that Tam came across in 2017 during her research on Chinese Canadian artist Lee Chao Nam 李趙南 at the BC Archives. But Lee was a friend of Carr, and Tam says it is possible that Lee taught Carr traditional Chinese brushwork to achieve the style in this sketch. While chickens have long been considered popular subject matter in Chinese ink painting, roosters are also a ubiquitous motif in Chinese porcelain dishware designs from Southern China and Hong Kong to Southeast Asia and their diasporas. Multiplied in inky form, they instantly appeal to young and old, like festival banners celebrating the humble yet magnificent bird.

Restaged in part for Plural 2025, Tam has made a smaller selection of bird drawings including those crowd-sourced from the Richmond Art Gallery (2017) iteration of her exhibition in which visitors produced hundreds of drawings in a community event. As in earlier installments, a flock of these drawings fly overhead like the feathered friends they depict, big swags of papers that swoop across the ceiling. Tam’s exhibition offers a different perspective on art of the Chinese diaspora—literally and figuratively—as their display method is more about how the drawings flutter collectively to comprise the installation rather than fixate on fine details of each bird. The poetry of this work is such that one drawing cannot hang without the other; each must be in company of and shown as a group.

I have always considered Tam to be an artist who moonlighted as art historical detective, mining the annals of Canadian art history for who and what has not been seen, surfacing histories lost and forgotten. Each project feels like a deep-sea diving expedition into art historical, archival and community records which Tam then materializes into an exhibition within an exhibition. Through meticulously staged installations, she presents a speculative art history for the viewer, stepping into a time machine to imagine what life was like for Chinese newcomers, or in the case of Lee, what his life might have looked like. In all of this, embedded in Tam’s deeply rooted and intertwined research practice as art is the story of Chinese immigration in Canada and the continued struggle for visibility and belonging both inside and outside of the art world. These histories, while constantly unfurling over land and time, are only just beginning.

The National Bank is proud to present Like rain drops rolling down new paint, an installation by Karen Tam.