FROM THE ARTISTS MOUTH May 2026 Art Writer MeMe+ / Jessie Tam

Art Writer MeMe+ on Jessie Tam's It Has to Be Apart/ It Has to Be Alone ++

A sense of place where things are at their disposal. They hold emotional frequencies in their meandering journey. 

As a young artist living away from her home, Hong Kong, Jessie Tam seeks her place in other surroundings. During her studies in Groningen, the Netherlands, in 2019, she wandered through the city, paying attention to overlooked and discarded materials. One of the first objects that drew her attention was a little British-Hong Kong coin hidden in her pocket, having followed her secretly all the way from Hong Kong. For the artist, the coin's uninvited presence is an inheritance never asked for, echoing the persistence of colonial history that continues to assert itself: we did not ask you to come by why did you? 

If inanimate objects can carry our stories, Jessie collaborates with them and searches for experiences that rigorously reshape the idea of home. What awaited her was an encounter with a plaster fragment abandoned at a house renovation site, waiting to be noticed. 

A plaster fragment at its disposal, lying in a bunch of white construction bags at a house renovation site. With blue droplets on its surface, the artist associated these long-existing traces with something that had grown with the architecture itself, carrying the imprint of the home to which it once belonged, as if crying. If crying is from the inside of our eyeballs, what she was seeing, perhaps, was the inside of the eyeballs.

For Jessie, the material impulse can be understood as acting out contextually. In 2019, Hong Kong, her home, was in political turmoil. Carrying with her objects, encounters, and stories, she amalgamates her personal memories of the unspeakable to create an alternative narration. Objects take on different forms and come together to tell a story that whispers through a home that has abandoned its memory fragment. These objects become diaries that flip through space, and reflections that capture the history and psychological pathways of her home. 

In It Has to Be Apart / It Has to Be Alone, Jessie composes a metaphorical mixed-media installation using fleeting lines of scattered experience, triggered by small moments of being away from home and of a home far off. Or is it a home we no longer recognise? Through a material and metaphorical approach, she transformed the fragment into a pair of distorted eyeballs and guided them back to the home, a place they could no longer recognise. Drawing on the sculptural and moldable potential of the material, the artist reasserts the gesture of the eyeballs cutting themselves in half: to settle between a “home” located somewhere in the lost past and another in an uncertain future. As a reflection of the diasporic condition, the work suggests a subjective interpretation of roots and the fluid contours of “home” and identity, may it be an indirect and personal response to a changing sense of home itself. What remains is the unspoken memory of a split identity within this paradoxical situation.

Inside the home, you will find:

A black-and-white window and a dying plant suggest one is no longer living there;

Restlessly lying around, paper coins flip up and down as if memory comes and goes; 

Approaching a doorway, it asked, “I did not ask you to come by why did you?”

Veiled with droplets, a pair of broken mirrors recalling how Eyeball cut themselves in half;

Moonlight is shining on the sea, we are heading to it, why is it not shining on us?

And in between, there stood a pair of eyeballs that looked terrified, and someone dressed as a cleaning lady, searching for the sprawling crosses on the floor, trying to fix the slit in them. There she said, “I want Eyeball come to visit the home become distorted and cut themselves in half.”

About It Has to Be Apart\ It Has to Be Alone

It Has to Be Apart \ It Has to Be Alone is a mixed-media installation project developed by Jessie Tam during her studies in the Netherlands (2019-2021). It has been showcased four times: first at jungganjijeom, Seoul (2020); then at ACO Art Space, Hong Kong (2023); followed by Pointsman Artspace, Hong Kong (2024); and most recently at C&G Artpartment, Sheffield (2026).

The version in Seoul is mainly object-led, while the Hong Kong version at ACO Art Space included an everyday performance, featuring an “eyeball maniac” character dressed as a cleaner, alongside an artist’s book set. These elements expand the project’s narrative, activating the space through embodied gestures and evoking a sense of spatial memory for a temporal return. In its third iteration, the performance was translated into a video work, allowing the character and narrative to evolve through a different medium. In its most recent presentation at C&G Artpartment, Sheffield, the performance continues in a more intermittent form, accompanied by a video projection that carries the narrative forward.

About the Artist

Jessie Tam (b. 1993, Hong Kong) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Manchester, UK. Extending beyond drawing, sculpture, site-specific installation and writing, she explores themes of memory, (be)longing, displacement, and the changing notion of "home". Through physical and narrative fragments, she crafts delicate scenes where found objects and subtle pictorials evoke the simplicity and fragility of everyday life.

Jessie's work involves household items and thin materials, such as PVC and glass. Focusing on translucency and reflection, she transfigures domesticity, cherishing what is residual and unassuming. Through her drawings and installations, she amplifies memories embedded in spaces, navigating uncertainty with persistence and nostalgia with hope.

Website: http://www.jessietam.com

Instagram: @jessie_tam_