LAM WONG

Born 1968, Xiamen, China. Lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

“I want to create layers of meaning, not just by building relationships, making connections and creating dialogues through the art works, but also by bringing to light the invisible, the gaps or intervals, and the mystery. It is achieved by expanding the dimension of time and space in my works.”

“I am fascinated by these mysterious connections between the art works and viewers. And I like the idea that my works are constantly demanding of each other and in conversation with one another.”

Lam Wong is a visual artist and curator whose practice unfolds across painting, installation, and performance. Born in Xiamen, China, and immigrating from Hong Kong to Canada in the 1980s, Wong studied design, art history, and painting in Alberta and British Columbia before establishing a long term base in Vancouver, where he has lived and worked since 1998.

Wong’s work is grounded in a sustained inquiry into how meaning is formed and felt. He approaches the artwork as a site of relationship, where perception shifts over time and where memory, space, and attention become active materials. Drawing on Western art history alongside Taoist and Buddhist thought, he treats artmaking as an ongoing spiritual practice, one that makes room for the invisible, the interval, and the unresolved. In this way, Wong challenges conventional ideas of painting, expanding it into lived space and staged encounter, and inviting the viewer into a dialogue that continues beyond the frame.

Wong has exhibited with many luminary artists, including Ai Wei Wei, Stephan Balkenhol, John Cage, Sophie Calle, Stan Douglas, Robert Filliou, Yoko Ono, Wayne Ngan, and Stephen Waddell, and has collaborated with Canadian artists including Marian Penner Bancroft, Glenn Lewis, Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov, Jeff Wall, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the City of Vancouver grant, the Province of BC grant, the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation grant, The Polygon Gallery Lind Emerging Artist Prize (long listed, 2020), the explorASIAN Award (Visual Art, 2022), and the Banff Centre Visual Art Scholarship (2023).