Kenneth Tam: The Medallion

January 17, 2025 – March 8, 2025
Bridget Donahue

99 Bowery, New York, NY 10002


Bridget Donahue presents The Medallion, a solo exhibition of new work by Houston-based artist Kenneth Tam. 1 consists of a new floor-based installation, sculptures and moving image works. Cast rucksacks, splintered car parts, LED screens, blinking lights and hand-blown glass vessels correspond atop an unsteady floor composed of woven beaded seat covers. Tam’s forms and materials merge to establish a vocabulary of vulnerability and precarity by way of the automobile, while projected images show a collective identity bound together by shared adversity.

Tam is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans video, sculpture, performance, movement, installation and photography. He investigates themes including the performance of masculinity, and how it intersects with race, labor, and ritual, often focusing on the dynamics of male intimacy and the societal constructions of identity and belonging. His practice looks at the boundaries between public and private space by interrogating how cultural and historical narratives shape our understanding of gender and community. Recent projects have trained Tam’s lens on the initiation practices of certain Asian American fraternities that incorporate performance and ritualized violence, and re-imagined narratives of the American cowboy through histories of Chinese migrant labor who built the Transcontinental Railroad.

The Medallion pursues Tam’s focus on ritual, and how it can mediate and negotiate experiences of both bodily and economic vulnerability. The works take as their starting point the lived experiences of immigrant NYC cab drivers who have suffered through the taxi medallion crisis of the past decade. Underwater scenes from the eponymous two-channel video suggest narratives of death and rebirth, juxtaposed with moments where the drivers talk candidly and emotionally about their struggles. The automobile, long a symbol of American freedom and mobility, has instead become a prison for those trapped by their medallion loans. Through recognizable symbols of transportation and transformation, Tam’s investigation unpacks the drivers’ arduous quest for liberation, while addressing the inherent contradiction of this pursuit that keeps them locked in their unending labor track. The sculptures and installation rawly present a ritualistic space that brings together traces of violence and possibilities for intimacy, placing the sacred next to the everyday profane. Sitting between strewn pieces of car debris, overnight bags and backpacks speak to both travel and migrancy, while their frozen, prostrate state resemble acts of silent devotion. Car reservoirs made of glass lit from below highlight their sensuous qualities, and bridge the space between the industrial, the organic, and the otherworldly.

Kenneth Tam (born in 1982 in Queens, NY) has held solo exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Queens Museum, New York; the 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 included 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, Texas, and is faculty at The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. He is represented by Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles.

Parts of this exhibition were originally commissioned by All Arts in 2024.