Artist Statement

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Wai Kit Lam continues to explore the notion of language in her last month residency in Berlin. And this time she collaborates with a London based Italian artist, Ivan Lupi.

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This new series entitled This is Not a Portrait, Wai Kit Lam and Ivan Lupi reveal a condition of an illusory idea about identity. It starts at a loss in translation while Wai Kit Lam was confused by the German names of cosmetic products. She spent a long time in front of the branches in a cosmetic shop, by only choosing and understanding the names if they are the right products she needed. In the end, she wasted her time with something that is, in fact, not necessary in her life.

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So what is the importance of choosing and using cosmetic products; do they really help and represent our own self? Ultimately it fabricates us with a fake identity. It is because those deceptive masks construct a self that does not belong to our own, and that is only a superficial presentation of which our society constructs us. That is not a genuine self, and with a mask, everyone has already lost his/her own identity. In truth, we present and deceive not only to the others but also to our own selves.

Wai Kit Lam & Ivan Lupi

Berlin, Germany
12.2009

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