Artist Statement

​

¿Dónde está el Paraíso? (Where is the Paradise?), is a project of my artist-in-residence at the Centre d'Art i Creació de Ses Voltes, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, during April 2016. I was one of the artists who won a grant for non-residents at Centre d'Art i Creació de Ses Voltes.

 

In this project, I would like to ask the visitors to rethink our idea of paradise, as if we have any fixed image or stereotypical concept.

 

I had therefore made this question to many people and collected countless different answers. Finally, I used all these materials and the perception of the paradisiacal island Mallorca to accomplish installation in a confined room.

 

In the middle of the room, I installed a work entitled "El Libro del Paraíso" (The Book of Paradise). This whole book is written with the perceptions of paradise I collected from others. Still, the visitors cannot read it clear because of the effect of the lightbox. It implied that there is no single perception of paradise, and everyone has their own understanding, and it could also be an illusion. On the other hand, "The Book of Paradise" is a metaphor for the stereotypical concept of Mallorca too.

 

On the four walls of this confined exhibition space, each had one photograph with the paradisiacal scenes of the sea of Mallorca and text. The texts of each photograph are the questions about the paradise that I would like the visitors to rethink the meaning of paradise.

​

Wai Kit Lam
Palma de Mallorca, España
4.2016

​

​

​