Karen Tam
old Mountain Restaurant installation, at the Joseloff Gallery, University of Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut

Griffin Art Project’s regrets to announce the cancellation of Karen Tam’s Moveable Feast, scheduled for Saturday March 21st from 12:00 - 2:30 PM. We have come to this decision due to the growing concern surrounding COVID-19, and the caution being advised by health authorities surrounding group events. Determined to implement a solution that continues to offer support to Chinese Restaurants in North Vancouver, while also helping those who are facing self-isolation, Griffin Art Project’s has developed a creative response to the situation at hand. We’ll be using our modest event budget to offer a limited number of complementary take-away meals delivered by a local Chinese restaurant, to individuals in North Vancouver who are feeling particularly challenged by the current situation. Griffin is specifically appealing to individuals facing difficulty with mobility, those who live alone with limited support systems and those facing challenges that make access to a hot meal difficult at this time.

Griffin Art Projects will be inviting those in need to contact us directly to receive a meal voucher from a North Vancouver based Chinese restaurant. Requests will be granted on a first come first serve basis, with designated restaurants selected according to the geographic location of the participant. For more information, or to request a meal voucher, interested individuals are asked to email Jazz Keillor, Interim Public Program’s and Residency Coordinator, at jasmine@griffinartprojects.ca. Inquiries can also be made by calling the Moveable Feast hotline at 604-243-4766. Please allow up to 24 hours for us to process requests.

Griffin Art Project’s current curator-in-residence, Karen Tam, was instrumental in developing a thoughtful plan that allows us to offer a small gesture of care and support in a time of need. Karen Tam is a Montreal-based artist and curator whose research focuses on the various forms of constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities, through her installation work in which she recreates spaces of Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters.

Throughout her time at Griffin, Tam has been working with local Asian art specialists, collectors and artists, to develop a project about how objects made by non-Western as well as Chinese and Chinese Canadian artists are collected, how narratives are constructed about these collections and the colonial notions that underwrite some of these relations. This research will result in an exhibition at Griffin Art Projects in January 2021.

Tam lives and works in Montréal and holds a MFA in Sculpture from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths (University of London). Since 2000, she has exhibited her work and participated in residencies in North America, Europe, and China, including the Deutsche Börse Residency at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal(Canada), and CUE Art Foundation (USA). She was a finalist for the Prix Louis-Comtois in 2017 from the Contemporary Art Galleries Association and the Ville de Montréal, a finalist for the Prix en art actuel from the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec in 2016, and long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2016 and 2010. Her works are in museum, corporate, and private collections in Canada, United States, and United Kingdom.