Talk

MFA Fine Arts presents a talk by Kenneth Tam.

Kenneth Tam is an artist based in Houston, Texas, and Queens, New York. Tam received his BFA from the Cooper Union and his MFA from the University of Southern California.

Tam works with video, sculpture, installation, movement, performance and photography. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, he examines themes including the performance of masculinity, the transformative potential of ritual and expressions of intimacy within groups. Tam often implicates the male body in his projects, using humor and pathos to reveal the performative and unstable nature of identity and often creates situations that foreground tenderness and vulnerability within unlikely settings. 

Tam has had solo exhibitions at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Berkeley; Ballroom Marfa; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Queens Museum; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; The Kitchen, New York; Visual Arts Center, The University of Texas at Austin; Minneapolis Institute of Art; and MIT List Center for Visual Arts, Cambridge. He is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts grants to artists in 2023, and his work is in the collections of The Guggenheim, LACMA, The Hammer Museum, The Cantor Art Center, The Dallas Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Tam is currently an assistant professor at Rice University and a faculty member at The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

Talks is a series of lectures by artists, writers and critics presented by MFA Fine Arts. Talks are held on Tuesdays at 3:00pm at 133 West 21st Street in Room 101C and on Zoom. Participation in the Q&A is limited to MFA Fine Arts students attending the lecture in person.

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