Wingyee Wu, Lap-See Lam

Mother's Tongue

Chinese restaurants have been a familiar feature of Swedish cities since the late 1970s, embodying the foreign and the exotic. Lap-See-Lam started the project by documenting the interiors of several Chinese restaurants in Stockholm at a time when many of them were about to be taken off the map. Her own family was selling their business in 2015. Using 3D laser scanning (often used for archaeology, architecture and forensic investigation), she wanted to preserve the place to remember her immigrant grandmother’s achievement in opening the restaurant. The video is divided into three chapters set in the past (1978), present (2018), and future (2058). The documentary turns into a fictional, even fantastical, narrative to craft a speculative trajectory. Language, identity, and life in the diaspora are explored through fictive monologues led by three generations of women. The work also sheds light on preconceptions of proximity to Chinese culture that Chinese restaurants may create. 

The ghostly aesthetic of the work was developed out of malfunction when converting the files. It gives a sense of ruin which enhances the topics addressed by the artist: memory, history, the passing of time, and the generations lost in translation. Produced in collaboration with filmmaker Wing-Yee Wu, Mother’s Tongue was originally designed as a mobile phone app in 2017 and a walking tour of Stockholm that took users to three locations linked to existing or closed down Chinese restaurants.