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

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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Lap-See Lam: Floating Sea Palace

Charles Campbell: How many colours has the sea

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