E-waste as art
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Growing out of power plugs, the roots of these trees seem to be infused with electric energies derived from sockets. As becomes clear from looking at other works by the same artist, they are part of a larger artistic experiment in which e-waste and metal garbage is transformed into intricate miniature landscape arrangements. The piece_Tung Lin III_is part of a series of “metal trees” (a translation of the Cantonese term_tung lin_). They engage with the ways in which trees are represented in Chinese landscape painting.
Lam Yau-sum’s sculptures made from electronic waste, water pipes and copper wires oscillate between the abstract and the concrete. In some works, tree and root-like shapes come to represent emotions, while in others they quite literally embody artificial plants of some kind.