Bridget Donahue presents The Medallion, a solo exhibition by Houston-based artist Kenneth Tam, featuring a floor-based installation, sculptures, and moving image works. Cast rucksacks, splintered car parts, LED screens, blinking lights, and hand-blown glass vessels rest on an unstable floor of woven beaded seat covers. Through these elements, Tam explores vulnerability and precarity, using the automobile as a central motif. Projected images reveal a collective identity shaped by shared adversity.
Tam’s interdisciplinary practice spans video, sculpture, performance, and photography, examining masculinity, race, labor, and ritual. The Medallion draws from the experiences of immigrant NYC taxi drivers impacted by the medallion crisis. A two-channel video juxtaposes underwater imagery with drivers’ testimonials, illustrating how the automobile—once a symbol of freedom—becomes a financial trap. Through transportation and transformation symbols, Tam exposes their struggle for liberation within a cycle of endless labor.
Kenneth Tam (b. 1982, Queens, NY) has held solo exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge), Queens Museum (New York), Institute of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Ballroom Marfa (Texas), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), and Tufts University Art Gallery (Medford). His work is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, and Hammer Museum, among others. Tam is currently an assistant professor at Rice University in Houston and faculty at The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. He is represented by Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles.
