Exhibit re-examines forgotten histories

Dec. 23—MARFA — In his solo exhibition, Kenneth Tam unearths forgotten histories in order to reimagine our own identities and to question dominant myths that shape and govern our bodies.

All of that is on display in the exhibition at Ballroom Marfa titled "Tender is the hand which holds the stone of memory."

The exhibition will be on display until May, 2023.

The exhibition features a series of commissioned sculptures alongside a two-channel video installation.

According to Ballroom Marfa's website, one of the most enduring myths that still haunts the nation is manifest destiny and the conquest of the American West.

These ideologies have circulated and remain embedded in popular culture through westerns and advertising such as the figure of the Marlboro Man.

Over the years, those images have reified claims to Indigenous land as well as distorted Indigenous histories while also enforcing stereotypes of Anglo-American masculinity that remain pervasive.

Tam's examination of American westward expansion is rooted in the unrecorded lives of nameless Chinese laborers who toiled under the most physically arduous conditions in the late 19th century.

The video installation which is called "Silent Spikes" weaves together improvised dialogue and movement sequences from a group of participants along with semi-fictional scenes of a worker from inside the tunnels of the transcontinental railroad.

Tam visited West Texas in 2021 and his encounter with artifacts and objects left at workers' camp sites along the railroad led him to consider how physical remnants function as stand-ins for the disappeared histories of labors.

Ballroom Marfa Curator Daisy Nam says the exhibition allows a side of history to be taught that people in school may not have learned.

"There's a lot of mythology about what has happened and a lot of passion around the state. People are so proud to be Texans but there's also a story that may not have been told so it's an opportunity to rethink what has really happened and understand history in different ways and just probe at the grand narratives that are taught in Texas. We have few years of Texas History (taught in schools) but I'm not sure how much of the history of Chinese laborers get told. So it's a different understanding of what has happened."

The exhibition originally opened in October.

"We're really excited about this exhibition," Nam said. "I think by spending some time out here in West Texas, (Tam) really got to understand what that means. Not only with the themes that we're talking about but what Ballroom does is allow artists to get to know the place and with that it, it inspires you to work out of that so we were excited to have him here. He actually just moved back to Houston last week."

"Tender is the hand which holds the stone of memory" is organized by Nam with assistance from Exhibitions and Curatorial Assistant Alexann Susholtz.

Tam was born in Queens, New York and has held solo exhibitions at MOCA Tuscon in 2022, ICA LA in 2021, Times Square Arts, New York in 2021 and much more.

His works are in the collections of Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Dallas Museum of Art.

For more information about the exhibition and Tam, go to tinyurl.com/yymdhp8k.

If you go

— What: "Tender is the hand which holds the stone of memory."

— Where: Ballroom Marfa.

— When: Exhibition is opened until May, 2023.