Filament of Vagabond Dreams

Artist’s Statement:

This sculpture was created by bending and coiling galvanized steel. It explores the visual structures of vessels and containers as places, entities or objects in which things are stored and from which they burst; they are transient storage of energy which fluctuates because of various gradients caused by collisions ranging from the subatomic to the cosmic, from the visceral to the imaginary. It is simultaneously a lysing bacteria and a supernova explosion, the gaping mouth of an anglerfish and the nest of a weaverbird.

I ponder notions of the foundational as personal cosmology through a material and spatial lens. The choice of a single material to foster a plethora of scale and visual associations is revealing of the transformative potential that lies within industrial materials in the aftermath of manual intervention.

Obscure lines strewn across space
coalesce as nodes
diverge as antennae
born from filaments of vagabond dreams.

About the Artist:

Tina Lam is a visual artist born and raised in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal) by parents of Cambodian-Chinese descent. She is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Visual Arts at Cornell University. She has previously earned a BFA in Studio Arts (Concordia University) and a PhD in Chemistry (McGill University). Her artwork – spanning painting, sculpture and installation – examines the interplay of forces at the nexus of nature, culture and the primordial.