Inspired by the Cantonese diaspora in Europe, Lap-See Lam wins $100,000 Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award

Exterior installation view, Lap-See Lam, The Altersea Opera, 2024. With Kholod Hawash and Tze Yeung Ho. The Nordic Countries Pavilion, 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale de Venezia
Michael M
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 Lise Wilhelmsen, who died in 2019, and her daughter-in-law Paulina Rider Wilhelmsen. “In the autumn of 2018, Paulina suggested establishing an art award programme in Lise’s name in collaboration with Henie Onstad [museum],” says a statement.
Lise was married to Arne Wilhelmsen, the late chairman of the Norwegian industrial investment company Anders Wilhelmsen & Co. AS. During her lifetime, Lise acquired works for her husband’s company, Royal Caribbean Cruises.
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.
Simone Leigh, Zineb Sedira and Ali Cherri also receive awards
Both artists will feature in the main exhibition titled The Milk of Dreams
The prestigious printmaking prize was founded by the Norwegian monarch
The Bangtan Boys musician was recognised for donating $90,400 to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul last September

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