gdm Taipei is pleased to present an exhibition by Lam Tung Pang, a self-exile, Hong Kong diaspora artist based in Vancouver since 2022. Furthering the artist’s exploration of existence and disappearance, fragmentation and identity. Everyone's journey toward faith is different speaks to a resilience in the face of a broken world—to unlearn, to decolonize oneself, to jump over the line, and to find hope in action.

Born in 1978 and raised in Hong Kong, Lam Tung Pang’s multidisciplinary practice examines the fragmented nature of contemporary life. Foregrounding Hong Kong’s colonial history to transformations as an autonomy under Chinese sovereignty, and the shifting global order from unipolarity towards a new era defined by multipolar rivalry. Lam translates the intangible experience of present-day forced displacement and resistance, isolation and activism—through video installation “Image-coated,” epic plywood landscapes “Mountains de-bonding,” and kinetic sculpture “Praying Hands.” These varied approaches capture the essence of Lam’s evolving selfhood in a foreign terrain.

History is like a pair of glasses, granting us perspective, while art is like a mirror, allowing us to see ourselves.

(Lam Tung Pang)

“Image-coated” was initially realized as a projection onto a translucent screen over windows with panoramic views of the Victoria Harbour at the Hong Kong Museum of Art at the end of 2019. An assemblage of animated charcoal drawings, manipulated camera footage and found images, expanding the myth of Lo Ting—who resisted the rule of the empire and were portrayed as social outcasts. For Lam, the amphibious form of Lo Ting recalls the Hong Kong people, who are constantly drifting between different cultural and sociopolitical terrains. On 28 May 2020, days before a historical addendum came into effect, Lam Tung Pang covered the museum windows with broken strokes resembling raindrops, using a whiteboard marker.

No matter how heavy the rain, I will still see Hong Kong through the gaps in the downpour.

(Lam Tung Pang)

Since 2020, ‘broken strokes’ became a prominent visual vocabulary in Lam’s plywood landscapes. Before his relocation to North America, Lam's final works produced in Hong Kong were part of a series titled "The land from further you are,” encapsulating the artist’s complex emotions leaving his homeland. For the artist, plywood embodies strength, a supper ground, its warm golden color also alludes to human skin. Plywood is a material for construction, yet it conveys a sense of temporariness, which echoes with Lam’s status.

The broken landscape formed by the broken world, inspired the broken language, spoke by the broken strokes...

(Lam Tung Pang)

Leaving Hong Kong pushed Lam into questioning his colonial experience, and to search for an emotional homeplace in a foreign terrain. He attempts to decolonize himself through understanding the beauty and politics behind landscapes and nature. Lam believes landscapes and body are interchangeable, they are the symbol of struggling between power and autonomy.

Mountains de-bonding (2023-ongoing) is a 3-part series composed of 36 plywood panels, each part 12 meters in width, where Lam deconstructed 213 mountains (from prints Lam found in the encyclopedia of pre-modern China, The Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China in 1725) with charcoal, combined with rubbing, erasure and burning—his broken strokes formed movement, between deconstruction and construction, in a broken world.