Lap-See Lam
'Phantom Banquet'
Stockholm-based artist Lap-See Lam explores shifts in Hong Kong Chinese visual culture across generations and geographies through the history of Sweden’s Chinese restaurants. Following an earlier attempt to archive her family’s former restaurant, Lam translates digital scans of Chinese eateries across Sweden, turning their composites into 3D-printed furniture and a virtual reality experience. Indistinct yet familiar, her reconstructions reveal a shared design language encoded with intergenerational communal memory and Western fetishizations of the East, exposing these spaces’ charged negotiations of the real and remembered, tradition and stereotype.
Narrated by a disembodied voice, the VR simulation journeys through a disintegrating dining room haunted by spectral figures, drawing on magical realism to conjure the past to the present. Lam’s glitchy tables and chairs — furniture subjected to the digital phenomenon of “generation loss,” or the corruption of data from migration across incompatible software — serve as metaphors for how diaspora transforms culture through time and space. Altogether, Phantom Banquet positions the Westernized Chinese restaurant as a collection of inherited and imposed memory where Hong Kong diasporic identity is reflected and constructed.
Stockholm-based artist Lap-See Lam explores shifts in Hong Kong Chinese visual culture across generations and geographies through the history of Sweden’s Chinese restaurants. Following an earlier attempt to archive her family’s former restaurant, Lam translates digital scans of Chinese eateries across Sweden, turning their composites into 3D-printed furniture and a virtual reality experience. Indistinct yet familiar, her reconstructions reveal a shared design language encoded with intergenerational communal memory and Western fetishizations of the East, exposing these spaces’ charged negotiations of the real and remembered, tradition and stereotype.
Narrated by a disembodied voice, the VR simulation journeys through a disintegrating dining room haunted by spectral figures, drawing on magical realism to conjure the past to the present. Lam’s glitchy tables and chairs — furniture subjected to the digital phenomenon of “generation loss,” or the corruption of data from migration across incompatible software — serve as metaphors for how diaspora transforms culture through time and space. Altogether, Phantom Banquet positions the Westernized Chinese restaurant as a collection of inherited and imposed memory where Hong Kong diasporic identity is reflected and constructed.
About the artist
Lap-See Lam (b. 1990, Stockholm; lives and works in Stockholm) is presenting solo exhibitions in 2026 at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway, and Vienna Secession. Lam presented a Gesamtkunstwerk at the Nordic Countries Pavilion during the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, in collaboration with Kholod Hawash and Tze Yeung Ho. Recent solo exhibitions include Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Power Plant, Toronto (Vega Foundation); Studio Voltaire, London; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Swiss Institute, New York; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; Lidköping Konsthall, Sweden; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Norway; and Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden. Lam has taken part in group exhibitions at venues including Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany; Ghost 2565, Bangkok; KINDL — Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine; Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden; Performa 19, New York; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; Luleå Biennial, Sweden; Kópavogur Art Museum, Iceland; and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark. Lam’s works can be found in institutional collections such as the Instituto Bernardo Paz, Brazil; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Moderna Museet; Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation, Sweden; Kadist Foundation, France/U.S.; M+, Hong Kong; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Finland; Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden; Public Art Agency Sweden; Stockholm Stad; and Röhsska Museet, Göteborg, Sweden. She received the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award in 2025.
Credits
Phantom Banquet is organized by SCAD Museum of Art assistant curator Haley Clouser.
Production credits
The following individuals contributed to the production of the VR experience Phantom Banquet, on view in this exhibition.
Original music and sound design: Marlena Salonen
Sound mixing and mastering: Linus Hillborg
Voice actor: Ping-Kwan Lam
Translation and editing: Ping-Kwan Lam, Yuk-Lin Lam, Lap-Yan Lam
Technical director: Martin Christensen
Technical assistant: Dennis Härmä
Motino capture studio: DevinSense
VR producer: Sofia Curman
The artist would like to thank the restaurant staff and their families at New Peking City, Hang Chow, Mandarin City, Ming Garden, Ming Palace, Bamboo Garden, Ho Wah, Hong Kong, Wing Shing, and Winner House.
