Kenneth Tam is an interdisciplinary artist who works across video, sculpture, installation and performance. His work examines themes including the performance of masculinity, the transformative potential of ritual, and expressions of intimacy within groups. His work often foregrounds the male body, using humor and pathos to reveal the performative and unstable nature of identity, and creates situations that highlight vulnerability within unlikely settings. A recent series of projects focused on the precarious lives of NYC taxi drivers in the aftermath of the medallion debt crisis.

His video installation Silent Spikes premiered at Queens Museum, NY in 2021, and has since been presented at several institutions across the US.

Tam has held solo exhibitions at Ballroom Marfa, TX; ICA LA, CA; Queens Museum, NY; The Kitchen, NY; Visual Arts Center, University of Texas at Austin, TX; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; and MIT List Center for Visual Arts, MA. He has participated in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, NY; The Shed, NY; SculptureCenter, NY; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, CA; Hammer Museum, CA; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX.

His work is held in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Guggenheim Museum, The Dallas Museum of Art, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Tam received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2004. Prior to teaching at Rice, he has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, The New School, Princeton University and Harvard University. Tam is also faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College, teaching in the Moving Image discipline.

Photo by Christian Carroll