Rosalie Lam
Cholon, Not Forgotten
August 8-11, 2018

The Red Head Gallery
401 Richmond St West
Toronto

This collection explores Rosalie Lam’s childhood memories of Cholon in the 1950s – 1960s. After leaving Vietnam in 1968 and emigrating to Canada, she later revisited her home in Vietnam four times, gathering material for this body of work. Working also from family albums, historical texts and photographic documentation, she reimagined and reinvented imagery which expressed her personal feelings about the Cholon of her childhood.

Above: Installation view, Rosalie Lam, Cholon, Not Forgotten, The Red Head Gallery, August 2018

This artistic process integrated memories of family life, social and historical events. She combined her recollection of childhood memories of places and events with the expression of her emotional longing for her birthplace. Rosalie captured the mood and feeling of life in Indochina at a time on the cusp of both historic change and personal loss.