Live Performance | 'The Price of Humanity' (2022) by Quỳnh Lâm

Join us for the live performance of a new work:The Price of Humanity (2022) by Quỳnh Lâm (b.1988, Vietnam / living and working between Bangkok & London). This is held on the occasion of London Gallery Weekend and in conjunction with our group exhibition titled Rituals & Rebirths curated by Peruke Projects in collaboration with A.I..

This performance is hosted by A.I. at 4 Cromwell Place (Gallery 1), London, SW7 2JE and lasts for approximately 20mins. As the artist enacts the ritual of cutting her hair with a pair of scissors that denote a personal history for her, and then placing it in a box within the exhibition space, she yearns to elicit emotive responses from the audience, inviting them to participate through the abstract form of language, history, and memory.

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Lâm’s latest series evolved over the last four years while living a nomadic existence, researching and working in the United States, Europe, and eventually Thailand where she completed her research during her artist residency with Peruke Projects. Her full objective is to document and present her research, as well as illustrate her emotional and creative responses to her time living in the diaspora, during the Covid-19 pandemic, surviving the traumas of being a target of racism, and the challenges of being unable to return to her home country.

Separated from her homeland, Lâm’s performance is both a tribute and a documentation of, in, and among the diaspora and her personal experiences as a “refugee”. Having let her hair grow out during the four-year passage of time, she now cuts it for the audience to confront toxic stereotypes and hate crimes towards Asian women.

As the artist enacts the ritual of cutting and collecting the hair in a box, by using a pair of scissors that denote a personal history for her, she yearns to elicit emotive responses from the audience as she invites them to participate through the abstract form of language, history, and memory. More specifically, with her use of paper notes highlighting traumatic experiences, the presentation of some of her possessions, and fragments of a body that moves endlessly through space and time, Lâm shares a spiritual and highly charged, ephemeral instance with the viewer.

This performance and exhibition is supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

More information about the exhibition and full press release here.

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About the artist

Quỳnh Lâm (b.1988, Vietnam) is an interdisciplinary artist who is living & working between Bangkok and London. Lâm works in performance, installation, video, and mixed media. She is a winner of The 2021 American Austrian Foundation Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts; a recipient of the Special Jury Prize – 2019 Art Future Prize in Taiwan. Lâm has exhibited work in Vietnam and abroad; including at The Factory Contemporary Arts Center in Ho Chi Minh City; The Vincom Center for Contemporary in Hanoi, Richard Koh Fine Art Gallery in Singapore, Museum of Contemporary Art in Nashville, Palazzo Costanzi Museum in Trieste and the Abbey of San Gallo in Moggio Udinese, Italy.