Born in colonial Hong Kong, Mung Lar Lam is a San Francisco based artist who has shown nationally and internationally. She received undergraduate degrees in Fashion Design from FIT, NY and Textiles from San Francisco State University; and an MFA in Textiles from California College of the Arts and an MPhil in Economic and Social History as a member of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her academic research focuses on previously undocumented women’s occupational labor and their economic contributions to the textiles industry during the industrial revolution.


Using textiles and performance Lam explores social and sexual politics in gender roles and the perception of ‘women’s work’ in public spaces. Her work combines the practices of dressmaking, drawing, painting, architecture and sculpture. Using a developing lexicon of new terms, she calls some of her works Ironings, Stitchings, Needlemarking and Chalkings. These invented disciplines and performed practices strive to push the limitations of current art nomenclature to provide new language and actions to more accurately serve post-disciplinary practices in contemporary art; while highlighting the marginalization of perceived feminine mediums and skills.

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"Ironings" is a domestic, gender-related and labor-intensive body of work created by employing reclaimed cotton fabric, starch and the manual chore of ironing. Through evolutionary and performative installations, the medium of ironed, re-ironed and un-ironed marks and folds are used to highlight concepts of temporality, transition, memory and perception; while notions of extended and compacted spaces are explored. Concurrently the practice of this cultural and socially specific task questions the positioning of women and labor in society and the relevance of classical art mediums in contemporary art.

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Needlemarkings utilizes the trace residue of stitching and construction as a mark-making medium, while addressing the historical and cultural positioning of needlework and those who employ it. Referring to needleworked samplers as the first form of women's education, each puncture of light traces the long history of this craft and illuminates socially coded concerns.

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Stitchings utilizes the act of hand sewing and thread to sculpt optical and perceptual experiences relative to light and it's transformative quality.

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Chalkings, at once additive and reductive, are ephemeral pieces created using tailor's chalk.

Video Interview: Gestures of Resistance, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR - 2010
Video Interview: Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles interview - 2008
fiber arts magazine - 2008
la times - 2008
south china post - 2008
beverly press - 2008