Artist Statement

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Il Dono per l'Anima Senza Nome (The Gift for the Nameless Soul) is a project I developed during the artist-in-residence in ICONE '50, Italfoto Archive, Torino, Italia, from 20 October – 30 November 2022.

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This project started by responding to the massive archives of the negatives from the 1950s' to 1990s' by Italfoto Archive. The archive has a wide range of subjects, including industrial reportage, celebrities, sports, car racing, portrait, as well as the people of daily life. These documents give us a broad vision of what happened in that period.

 

My interest focused on who, how and why the archives were photographed. But the more I read the archives, the more I understood that history is written by the winners.

 

Thus, we should not rely on the only source to learn about the past. I then turned my curiosity to the nameless people in the archives as I assumed they represented better about everyday life than celebrities. I created a unidirectional dialogue, imposed my contemporary idea onto the past and created Il Dono per l'Anima Senza Nome. 

 

Ultimately, I was no different from the "winner" who wrote history because I placed my idea onto something out of my knowledge.

 

The only difference is that I reexamined myself while history always repeats itself.

 

Wai Kit Lam

Italfoto Archive, Torino, Italia

11.2022

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