The Greatest Stories Ever Told
Ho Tam
a feature exhibition of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
April 1 - May 7, 2022
In this exhibition, Vancouver-based artist and independent publisher Ho Tam presents a series of collage-based works emerging from his fascination with the engraved illustrations on bank notes and their loaded symbolism. In a playful yet critical intervention, Tam cuts and splices graphic elements found on currencies from around the world, remixing nationalistic signifiers to deflate their implicit power while proposing new possibilities.
In the following artist statement, Tam explains his motivations, his process, and the meanings behind his composite works:
"This project began from my fascination with engraved illustrations on banknotes. In order to make the collages, I was collecting the images from international banknotes two years before the actual creative process.
Besides the ‘face values,’ I am also interested in all the symbols in behind that represent the different countries. These representations are often one-sided, chosen from the point of view of the people in office. As money is directly connected to power in many contexts, the collages became an exploration of issues such as the imbalance in wealth distribution and the inequality among us.
By making collages based on the extracted images from the banknotes, I try to liberate the images from their original context and to create new narratives and commentaries that reflect on the relationships between the world and us. The collages are naïve, juvenile, strange, poignant and sometimes just foolish. Imagining a universe without limitations, they are my attempt to alter our existing concept of power in seek of possibilities and contemplation."
—Ho Tam
Born in Hong Kong, HO TAM is a media/visual artist who has worked in advertising and community psychiatry. He received a BA from McMaster University and an MFA from Bard College (NY). From 1996 to 1997, he was a participant at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Tam has exhibited in public galleries and alternative spaces across Canada, including the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (2001) and and two survey exhibitions, A Portrait of the Photographer, Paul Petro Contemporary Art (2015), and Cover To Cover at the Richmond Art Gallery, BC (2018). Tam's work was also included in The Tin Man Was A Dreamer: Allegories, Poetics And Performances Of Power at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2020). Over 15 of his experimental film/video works are in circulation including screenings at Centre Pompidou, Paris, Toronto International Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and the travelling exhibition Magnetic North: Canadian Experimental Video organized by the Walker Art Center, Minnesota.
Tam is a recipient of various grants and awards, including the Grand Marnier Video Fellowship (2003) from the Film Society of Lincoln Center (New York) and the Best Documentary Feature at Tel Aviv LGBT Film Festival. From 2004 to 2011, Tam taught in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Victoria. He recently edited and published Frontline: Interviews with International Photo-based Artists. He is also the publisher of Hotam Press, an independent press of artist books, and currently runs a bookshop and gallery of the same name. Ho Tam lives in Vancouver, BC and has been exhibiting at Paul Petro Contemporary Art since 2002.