Curated by Erin Storus
March 17 to May 15, 2022
CATALOG COMING SOON!
Rosalie Lam: Cholon, Not Forgotten is a solo exhibition curated for the John B. Aird Gallery by independent curator Erin Storus.
The exhibition explores Vietnam-born Chinese-Canadian painter Rosalie Lam’s latest series of work. Drawing from childhood memories and created over the past decade, the exhibition includes paintings, sketches, and family photos from pre-war Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). The exhibition will be on view from March 17-May 15, 2022. Lam’s works are accompanied by essays by her son, Canadian writer and medical doctor Vincent Lam, and exhibition curator Erin Storus.
The exhibition is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue featuring an interview with the artist and a foreword by Carla Garnet, Director of the John B. Aird Gallery. Jennifer Vong, Aird Gallery Administrative Director, will design the exhibition publication and conduct an interview with Rosalie.
Rosalie Lam was born in Vietnam’s ethnically Chinese city of Cholon, now part of Ho Chi Minh City. There, she received eight years of training in classical French painting before moving to Montreal to escape the violence of the Vietnam War. She studied at McGill University, and her subsequent training has included studies at the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Lam uses oil painting to express her memories of her life in Cholon, intricately weaving together fragments of family, food, city life, spirituality, and war.
Curator Erin Storus observes that “Rosalie Lam’s work has never been significantly recognized within Canada. Presenting her work at a renowned public art gallery will give audiences the chance to engage with an artist whose work explores memories of a way of life that ceases to exist in the present day, but that continues to significantly inform contemporary Chinese-Vietnamese culture, both within Vietnam and the Chinese-Vietnamese diaspora in Canada.”
“Further, it creates an opportunity for a cross-generational and cross-cultural exchange to take place within a city that is home to 2.93 million unique perspectives, yet which often only showcases a small fragment of those perspectives within its galleries and museums,” says Storus.
