It took years for female artists to make a name for themselves and get represented in art galleries. It is challenging for common people to name any five female artists and their artwork. Of course, there are fringe ones like Frida Kahlo, but it is changing now, thanks to international gallerist Pearl Lam and the likes of her. Pearl Lam, a famous Hong Kong-based gallerist, has been representing and curating female artists and their artwork for years now. In 2015, she curated pieces of 24 Chinese female artists and their contemporary artwork in her eponymous Pearl Lam Galleries in Hong Kong.
In 2023, at Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, the art world Wonder showcased the works of Cynthia Polsky, named Here Comes the Sun. This was the 84-year-old artist’s first solo exhibition; born in 1939, Polsky had a different approach to her artwork than her contemporaries.
The exhibition puts forth an important question: Why did Cynthia Polsky have to wait so long to have a solo exhibition?
Art World Wonder Pearl Lam Challenges Art World Conventions
To understand why Pearl Lam showcasing Polsky’s work is so important, we need to look into the history of women and art. For years now, women have been talking about the pay gap in workplaces, but very few take notice of the gender inequality and under-representation of women artists in the art world. For aeons now, society has groomed and encouraged women to be artistic, but unfortunately, it is for family and social life. It has nothing to do with the profession.
It was not until the 19th century that women were allowed to attend fine arts school, where the curriculum focused on classical art and the female students were not allowed to draw nudes. Women artists faced several obstacles; one of the critical hurdles was men’s control of the art institution and the exposure that was allowed to women, thus hindering their commercial success. The critics (male) had an opinion about the kind of art that women can or should produce. While some critics thought saying a woman artist’s work was masculine was the best compliment, it was also a criticism. The result was many talented artists signed their work either with the last name or the initial to navigate the bias.
In such a landscape, which to an extent persists, there is Cynthia Polsky, who departed from the conceptual art movement that saw the rise of colour field paintings and abstract expression of her time. She refused to conform to the norms of her time as an artist and created her own style and direction of art that was not part of the post-war American narrative ruling the art world at that time. Instead, as an active painter in New York between the 1960s and 70s, Polsky’s work embodied the nuances of her imagination and subconscious pertaining to her study of ballet and her travels to South Asia and the East.
As a female artist, it is already difficult to find a space to showcase one’s art, and when one does not conform to the norms of the time, it proves to be even more difficult. However, some people like Hong Kong-based gallerist Pearl Lam ensure that the world sees the innovative art of an artist like Cynthia Polsky. An artist who broke the tradition of the ’60s and ’70s American art world and created her own path, like Lam, who has made her own legacy by breaking the conventions. The result is Pearl Lam becoming the authority of Asian contemporary art and design.
Why We Need International Gallerist Pearl Lam?
It is always easier to follow the traditions and walk on the path set forth by the predecessors. Forging a path of one’s own is filled with challenges, hurdles and hardships, but it also gives the satisfaction of doing something new. That is precisely what Hong Kong-based gallerist Pearl Lam has been doing with her Pearl Lam Galleries. From the beginning, she has exhibited artworks that had not been part of the Chinese and Asian galleries.
The work that she undertook was not to become the famous international gallerist Pearl Lam but rather to show China, Asia, and the West that Chinese art is beyond the conventional art form that one perceives. Lam showed that the West does not influence contemporary Chinese art or is a copy of the West. Instead, Chinese contemporary art has been influenced by Chinese tradition and culture. Lam became an art world wonder because she single-handedly changed the Chinese and Asian art and gallery landscape, where Hong Kong and Shanghai became the coveted place for international art fairs.
Similarly, she removed the notion that East can be interpreted by Asian artists only with Cynthia Polsly’s works. The paintings of Polsky shown by Lam in Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, were based on the lived experiences and memories of her travelling through the East during her transformative years and training as a ballet dancer. The colour palettes of Cynthia Polsky’s work are abstract forms reminiscent of the traditional Indian art of the Mughal and Rajput paintings of the 16th and 19th centuries. Similarly, her works also invoke the ink paintings of Chinese landscape and Japanese calligraphy.
While Pearl Lam, as a Hong Kong-based gallerist, has been at the forefront of changing how the West looks at Chinese and Asian art, she has also shown how Asians should perceive the understanding of Western artists who interpret Asian culture and work. According to the art world wonder Pearl Lam, it is essential that art becomes a source of conversation, breaking boundaries and a way to accept heterogeneity where gender, age, and geographic location shouldn’t matter. Instead, people should be able to appreciate art and the artists without judgment.
