The end of Hong Kong’s golden age marked the start of her success
Artist Jaffa Lam’s practice describes a dynamic arc – like Hong Kong’s art scene itself – moving beyond cultural tradition to embrace the everyday and individual
Jaffa Lam Laam’s story of her childhood as a new immigrant in Hong Kong, and how she came to be represented by a major international gallery, has dramatic turning points. Underpinned by an unwavering self-belief, her tale elucidates Hong Kong’s perforated relationship with mainland China, the dynamics behind its own art history, the impact of the international art market and, most of all, that there is no linear Hong Kong narrative.
Lam was born in 1973 in Fujian province, southern China, while Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was still raging. She was given the Chinese first name Laam, which means mountain mist, but she never had the luxury of living with her head in the clouds. Lam’s mother brought her and her sister to Hong Kong in 1985, initially to reunite with their father, who had moved earlier to the British colony. But the years of separation had taken a toll on the marriage, so Lam, her elder sister and her mother ended up living on their own, and were soon plunged into poverty.
Jaffa Lam poses with one of her installation works at her studio. Photo: Eugene Chan
Hong Kong in 1985 was just coming to terms with the fact that Britain was planning to hand it over to Communist China in 1997, after ruling it since 1842. But the economy was remarkably resilient, bolstered by Beijing’s promise that Hong Kong could keep its capitalist ways, retain its civic freedoms and enjoy a high degree of autonomy. As immigrants from China, Lam’s family had to adapt to a completely different way of life, a different way of writing Chinese (traditional rather than simplified), a different way of speaking (Cantonese rather than Mandarin) and, in a city where they could only afford to rent a tiny rooftop shack, a different class system altogether.
Art was not so much an escape as a means to help out the household budget. “I had taken art lessons in China so I was quite a good art student compared with my local classmates,” says Lam. “I kept winning school prizes – textbook vouchers, usually, which were really helpful. That’s how I came to think of art as a means of making a living.”
Somersault Cloud (2022), left, incorporates materials recycled from Lam’s past works. Starry Day (2015/2022), right, was originally stretched on a canvas in previous exhibitions. Photo: courtesy of Axel Vervoordt Gallery
Lam’s exemplary skills in drawing and calligraphy won her admission to Hong Kong’s only fine-art tertiary programme then, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where she intended to focus on Chinese calligraphy under the school’s many eminent ink masters. “I thought of myself as an inheritor of China’s literati tradition,” she recalls. “I had no idea about Western art history or contemporary art.”
