Image: Lap-See Lam, 192 Wing Lok Street, exhibition view, Secession 2026. Photo: Oliver Ottenschläger. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm/Berlin/Mexico City
Lap-See Lam's exhibition "192 Wing Lok Street" at the Vienna Secession closes on November 22, 2026. The show presents a new group of works by the artist, made up of mouth-blown glass pieces, clay works and installation, which the Secession describes as a sequence of material and narrative translations drawn from collective and personal histories across generations and places.
The title is the address of a street in Hong Kong where Lam photographed the bamboo scaffolding widely used on the city's construction sites. The same street also belongs to her family's story: her grandmother once sold fruit there.
The exhibition starts in the Secession's foyer, where a large bamboo sculpture stands in the middle of the room and appears to break through the building itself. In the basement gallery directly below the main entrance, a chandelier with a root-like form provides the light, and tangerines lie in the corners of the space.
Throughout the rooms, elements of the scaffolding are singled out, altered and reworked, then set on polished, mirrored surfaces that reflect what surrounds them. One piece, which combines real bamboo with glass, hangs directly on the wall and points to the material qualities and symbolic weight of both. A steady hum accompanies the visit. Composed by Marlena Salonen and Linus Hillborg, it comes from a repurposed air-conditioning unit of the type found on building facades around the world.
The glass works were realized with the technical team of Cirva, and the project credits Carl-Oskar Linné as artistic adviser and Martin Christensen as technical director, with Björn Anéer responsible for the air-conditioning installation.
Lam works across 3D scanning, animation, sculpture and installation. According to her gallery Blindspot, a recurring motif in her practice is the Chinese restaurant, often reconstructed digitally from scans of interiors that no longer exist, as a way of looking at how cultural identity is shaped by reproduction, myth and displacement.
