Biography

Born: My Tho, Vietnam

H. Lan Thao Lam is a bi-national, bilingual artist who has lived in Asia (Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan), Canada and the US. Through object-making, installation, film, video, writing and intervention, she works with the specificities of materials, medium and site according to each project, addressing the social memory of time, place, and politics. Some of her current projects are long-term and on-going, while others are temporal interventions that last for a specific time frame.

For the past seven years, she has been collaborating with filmmaker/artist Lana Lin. As Lin + Lam (Lin plus Lam), they produce interdisciplinary projects that examine the ramifications of the past for the current socio-political moment. The collaboration has made films, installations, and publication projects about immigration, sites of residual trauma, national identity and historical memory.

Lam holds an MFA degree in Visual Arts from California Institute of the Arts, and considers her experiences in refugee camps in Malaysia and housing projects in Canada also part of her education. She has screened and exhibited her work internationally. She was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts - Media Art Grant, H.L. Rous Sculpture Award, and James Robertson Environmental Design Award.