Lam creates mythical video installations that draw on traditional storytelling forms such as Cantonese opera and shadow play puppetry.

Lap-See Lam was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1990, where she lives and works. She obtained her master’s degree in Fine Art in 2020 from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
Lam creates mythical video installations that draw on traditional storytelling forms such as Cantonese opera and shadow play puppetry. Her work takes a magic realist approach, creating alternative representations of Chinoiserie as defined by imperialist history, while simultaneously reflecting on her own family history of migration from Hong Kong to Sweden, both to claim and complicate cultural heritage.



Lap-See Lam creates mythical video installations that draw on traditional storytelling forms such as Cantonese opera and shadow play puppetry. Her work takes a magic realist approach, creating alternative representations of Chinoiserie as defined by imperialist history, while simultaneously reflecting on her own family history of migration from Hong Kong to Sweden, both to claim and complicate cultural heritage.  
  
In her newest film, _Floating Sea Palace_ (2024), Lam draws on the folklore tale of Lo Ting, a mythical human-fish hybrid, who is believed to be the ancestor of the Hong Kong people. In Lam’s story, Lo Ting exists both in past and future form, played by pop singer Bruno Hibombo and artist Ivan Cheng, respectively. Past Lo Ting longs to return to his former home Fragrant Harbour, the phonetic translation of Hong Kong. He unknowingly summons a dragon ship, performed by vocalist and improviser Sofia Jernberg, based on a real three-story ship named the Floating Restaurant Sea Palace. Commissioned by entrepreneur Johan Wang in Shanghai in the 1990s, it was relocated to different European ports where it lived many lives as restaurants, a haunted house, and now, a ruin. Lam has filmed aboard the real ship and taken its story of transformation and search for a harbour as the heart of the story. The ship embodies the mistranslation inherent to experiences of dislocation, and the complexity of searching for belonging. The dragon ship has inspired several of Lam’s major works, including _The Altersea Opera_ (2024), presented at the 60th International Venice Biennale, as well as _Tales of the Altersea_ (2023) and _Dreamers’ Quay_ (2022).  
  
In _Floating Sea Palace_, a sequel to the Altersea series, Lo Ting’s story is narrated by Singing Chef, a former chef aboard the dragon ship, played by Ping-Kwan Lam. The ship travels through space and time, propelled not by wind but by stories and memories. During its journey, the ship encounters a storm in the North Sea, where it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. As Lam is interested in mutable forms of translation, Fragrant Harbour emerges as a placeholder for an idea of home, a concept that remains out of reach. _Floating Sea Palace_ is a story of longing to return to an ever-shifting home, but needing instead to begin again.

_Floating Sea Palace_ is Lap-See Lam’s first-ever exhibition in Canada. For this installation, she worked with bamboo sifu (expert) Ho Yeung Chan to construct an environment built out of bamboo scaffolding. For centuries, bamboo has been an integral architectural and cultural material in Hong Kong and southern China. It is used as both construction scaffolding and as material for temporary stages for the celebrated art form of traveling, Cantonese operas. Lam’s ghostly film is held in the centre of the bamboo frame, drawing from the visual language of shadow puppetry, a traditional form of storytelling that is closely linked to Chinese folklore. Incorporating original shadow animation and 3D scans taken from the real dragon ship, as well as an original, multi-channel score composed by Marlena Salonen, the phantom-like aesthetic of the moving image invites imaginative encounters with Lam’s story and its characters.  
  
_Floating Sea Palace_ is co-commissioned by The Vega Foundation, Studio Voltaire, and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Produced in partnership with Moderna Museet. Floating Sea Palace is concurrently on view at Studio Voltaire in London from September 18 to December 15, 2024.  
  
_Floating Sea Palace_ was developed from the film _The Altersea Opera_, which was commissioned by Moderna Museet in partnership with The Vega Foundation and supported by Studio Voltaire and The Power Plant. _The Altersea Opera_ was presented as part of the Nordic Pavilion at the 60th International Venice Biennale ( April 24 to November 24, 2024).  
  
The exhibition at The Power Plant is organized and developed in partnership with The Vega Foundation. Founded in 2021, The Vega Foundation is dedicated to supporting and promoting artists through the production and acquisition of new moving image works and to facilitating their presentation through institutional collaborations.


Lap-See Lam: Floating Sea Palace

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Lap-See Lam, still from Floating Sea Palace

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In Partnership With

Supporting Donor

Julia Paoli, Director & Curator, The Vega Foundation  
Kate Whiteway, Assistant Curator, The Vega Foundation  
Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs, The Power Plant  
Frances Loeffler, Curator of Exhibitions, The Power Plant  


CURATORS

Floating Sea Palace

This work by Tkaronto (Toronto)-based artist June Clark, is a socio-historic document of a place and its people, seen through a distinctly personal lens. The work was made as part of a series of photo-etchings from the same year titled _Whispering City_, in which Clark brings together snippets of stencilled text with photographs of her early family life in Central Harlem, New York and Tkaronto in the 1970s and 1980s. Employing a wiping technique during the production process, she eloquently illustrates the elusive nature of memory: the way it constantly emerges and recedes. By combining the image with text drawn from familial sayings and other childhood recollections, the artist attempts to “fix” the memory, anchoring her subjective interpretation of the past to another highly personal representation. The work is evidence of Clark’s deep love of and sensitivity toward a community she has continually returned to as a subject in her practice.

This presentation coincides with the exhibition June Clark: _Witness_, on view at The Power Plant from May 3 to August 11, 2024. 

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June Clark: South Facade Billboard

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IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs
Frances Loeffler, Curator of Exhibitions

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Charles Campbell is a Jamaican born multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator whose practice animates the future imaginaries possible in the wake of slavery and colonization.

Charles Campbell is a Jamaican born multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator whose practice animates the future imaginaries possible in the wake of slavery and colonization. His artworks, which include sculptures, paintings, sonic installations and performances, have been exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Vancouver Special, Disorientations and Echo at the Vancouver art Gallery, Fragments of Epic Memory at the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Other Side of Now at the Perez Art Museum Miami. Campbell is the recipient of the 2022 VIVA Award and the 2020 City of Victoria Creative Builder Award. He holds an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmith College and a BFA from Concordia University. He currently lives and works on lək̓ʷəŋən territory, Victoria BC.



Charles Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist whose diverse body of work challenges traditional notions of time and delves into possibilities arising in the aftermath of colonization. For _How many colours has the sea_ (2024), he creates a portal into a realm where the spirits lost in the Middle Passage—the harrowing journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic—find solace. The exhibition consists of newly commissioned works, including a large-scale sculpture that recreates the submerged terrain where African and North American tectonic plates converge, and nine monolithic panels, or “Breath Portraits” that visualize the breath of members of the Black community. It also includes an audio installation capturing the tranquil and tumultuous atmospheres of the sea using hydrophones (underwater microphones), and filling the gallery with the sounds of an ocean journey, both stormy and calm. An additional work available on headphones offers personal reflections on reconnecting with the lost. With these deeply resonant works, Campbell creates a sanctuary for private contemplation and collective healing that confronts the profound consequences of systems designed to divide and oppress.  
  
_How many colours has the sea_ is co-commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and the National Gallery of Canada and co-presented with The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. The Toronto Biennial of Art is on from September 21 to December 1, 2024 at 11 venues across the city. For more information, visit **[torontobiennial.org](https://torontobiennial.org/)**.

Charles Campbell: How many colours has the sea

Charles Campbell, Breath Portrait series, 2024. C-print on aluminum composite panels, 20 in x 144 in. Courtesy the artist. 

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Co-commissioned by

Major Donor 

Dominique Fontaine, Curator, Toronto Biennial of Art  
Miguel A. López, Curator, Toronto Biennial of Art  
Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs, The Power Plant  
Frances Loeffler, Curator of Exhibitions, The Power Plant  


How many colours has the sea

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The Power Plant is currently open with exhibitions Lap-See Lam: Floating Sea Palace and Charles Campbell: How many colours has the sea.

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Missed the exhibition at The Power Plant? Visit our Touring Exhibitions at other galleries across Canada and the world!


Touring Exhibitions

Experience international and Canadian art by leading contemporary artists of our time.

Exhibitions

Emmanuel Osahor’s practice focuses on beauty as a necessity for survival, respite, and sanctuary. Known primarily for his paintings of lush, verdant gardenscapes—inspired by real and imagined locations—these works meditate upon the complicated histories of these sites that entail the domestication of lands, plants, and individuals alike. To dream of other places is the artist’s first major solo presentation in his home city of Toronto and includes paintings, drawings, prints, ceramic sculptures, and a site-specific photographic wallpaper commissioned for the Fleck Clerestory gallery at The Power Plant.  
  
Conceived as a night garden, the exhibition presents Osahor’s work in a unique environment intended to immerse the viewer in a contemplative space where feelings of delight and sorrow coexist as reflections of the human experience. The artist’s poetic yet critical approach to a subject that has been well represented throughout art history reflects a practice that is profoundly engaged with beauty, painting, and the everyday at a time when meaningful encounters with art are needed more than ever.
The exhibition is accompanied by an ambitious public program centred on Osahor’s keen interest in nature’s regenerative power.  
  
  
**About the Artist**  
Emmanuel Osahor holds an MFA at the University of Guelph (2021) and a BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta, Edmonton (2015). His work has been presented in numerous solo and collective exhibitions, including at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; SNAP Gallery, Edmonton; The Works Art & Design Festival, Edmonton; the Art Gallery of Guelph; BAND Gallery, Toronto; and MOCA Toronto. In 2018 Osahor received an honourable mention at the 20th RBC Painting Competition and in 2021 he received the Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting. Osahor is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at the University of Toronto.

Emmanuel Osahor: To dream of other places

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Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs, The Power Plant  

CURATOR

To dream of other places

_Light Cream Pods_ is a new exhibition by Fatimah Tuggar that explores the calabash. Using augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI) and animatronic sculptures, the exhibition offers interactive encounters that reflect on the meanings, uses, and possible futures of this culturally significant vine fruit, set within architectural facades inspired by the Tubali vernacular design of the Hausa people of the Sahel region of the African continent.  
  
Known for its versatility, the fruit of the calabash can be eaten when fresh. When dried and emptied, the decorated pods can be used for a wide variety of utilitarian and artistic purposes: storage containers, inkwells, bowls, and musical instruments, for example. The traditional uses of the calabash and its associated crafts and economies are currently under threat in West Africa as Indigenous customs are displaced by global commodification, petrochemical pollution, and poisonous plastics.  
  
_Light Cream Pods_ examines this situation through a multi-layered approach that sees centuries-old traditions sitting alongside new technologies. The exhibition is structured as a shared courtyard, with “doors” and “windows” containing arrangements of vine and tree calabashes decorated through carving, painting, dying and burn marking that become the trigger for AR experiences. Visitors are able to witness the highly creative and playful calabash traditions that persist to this day while listening to calabash artists talk about their lives and the challenges they face. Alongside this, an AI livestream speculatively imagines the future evolution of calabash-based objects, and two videos consider the devastating effects of plastic pollution in West Africa, while gourd-based animatronics bloom and flutter at intervals throughout the exhibition.  
  
With _Light Cream Pods_, Tuggar presents the calabash as a signifier and container for ideas that foster environmental equity in a time of pending global destruction. The interactive element of her playful, mediated exploration positions the viewer as an active participant, one whose power and agency has the potential to generate real change in the world. Tuggar introduces the age-old traditions of the calabash as a solution to some of the most urgent issues of our time, and a radical prompt to imagine other, possible futures.  
  
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, co-produced with The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, with the support of the University of Florida School of Art + Art History, USA. Courtesy of BintaZarah Studios.  
  
  
The following workers, artisans, crafts persons, research scholars, facilitators, technologists, translators, scientists, hackers, jammers, creative talent, and volunteers have provided support to the artist and BintaZarah Studios: Yemboado Charles, Valerie Luciow, Tirogo Alidou, Thaddaeus Bourne, Stephen Diapi, Sherry Sparks, Samba Niang, Rush Rankin, Ras Baba, Pape Niang, Oumar Ly, Michael Lightsmith, Leonardo Villalón, Kalidou Démbélé, Javier Cruz, Ibrahim A. Tuggar, Gilad Dor, Gabriele Belletti, Fiona McLaughlin, Ester Nyamba Kpange, Dinorah Vazquez, Dario Srbu, Dane Blacic, Dan Maraya Jos, Carson Teal, Bob Mendez, Binta Tuggar, Benjamin Soares, Benedicta Opoku-Mensah, Bamie. Siaka Steve Street, Augustine Danso, Amadou Cissokho, Alexander Abair, Alex Opoku, Abou Diop, Abdul Kanu, Abdou Karim Diagne, Stefan Subin, Slobodan Đurić, Papa Badlane, Hitler Bobo, Haris Ramic, Caslav Stepanovic, Andjela Mihajilovski, and Adrian Djura. 

Fatimah Tuggar: Light Cream Pods

Fatimah Tuggar, Light Cream Pods, 2024. Calabashes, Architectural Façades, Animatronic Sculptures, AR, AI Generative Imaging, Two Channels Digital Video, Dimensions Variable. Courtesy of BintaZarah Studios. Photo: Matteo Visentin 

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Frances Loeffler, Curator of Exhibitions, The Power Plant

The Power Plant