The Swedish artist Lap-See Lam has won one of the art world’s biggest prizes, the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award, which comes with $100,000 cash.
As part of the prize, Lam also receives an exhibition at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, a private museum located in Høvikodden, Norway, with an accompanying publication. The museum will also acquire one of her works.
The award jury says in a statement: “Lap-See Lam’s work investigates narratives and mythologies surrounding the Cantonese diaspora in Europe, particularly in Sweden. Through digital media, sculpture, and immersive installations, she explores themes of cultural heritage, representation, and identity.”
Lam represented the Nordic Countries at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024 and will have exhibitions at the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art in Montréal and at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, later this year. For her first solo exhibition in the US at the Swiss Institute in New York in 2023, Lam, whose parents ran a Chinese restaurant in Stockholm, created an immersive video installation that uses imagery drawn from 3D scans she made of Western-style Chinese restaurants.
The Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award was established by Arne Wilhelmsen and his family in memory of his late wife Lise Wilhelmsen, who died in 2019. Arne Wilhelmsen was the chairman of the Norwegian industrial investment company Anders Wilhelmsen & Co. AS. During her lifetime, Lise acquired works for her late husband’s company, Royal Caribbean Cruises.
“In the autumn of 2018, Paulina Rider Wilhelmsen, Lise Wilhelmsen’s daughter-in-law, suggested establishing an art award programme in Lise’s name in collaboration with Henie Onstad [museum],” says a statement. Rider Wilhelmsen was a judge along with Michelle Kuo, the chief curator at large and publisher at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Elvira Dyangani Ose, the director of MACBA, Barcelona.
Previous prize winners include Kuwait-based Alia Farid in 2023, El Salvador-born Guadalupe Maravilla in 2021 and Otobong Nkanga of Nigeria in 2019.
