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How Taiwanese-Canadian actress Karena Lam stays curious as an artist and a mother
Profile | ‘My hands are always dirty’: actress Karena Lam on her new pottery obsession, women in film, and why she won’t sing professionally again
- Four years ago, actress Karena Lam started playing with clay – and it ignited a passion for a new form of art that has reshaped her creative identity
- The Hong Kong International Film Festival ambassador talks to the Post about embracing failure as a result of it, amplifying women’s voices in film, and more
The coronavirus pandemic compelled many of us to embark on journeys of self-discovery and introspection. It led some of us to explore untapped passions, rekindle forgotten dreams and unearth hidden talents.
For Taiwanese-Canadian actress Karena Lam Ka-yan, the past four years have seen her get deep into a new form of art that has reshaped her creative identity – pottery.
“My hands are always dirty and I’m always in the studio,” she says with a laugh when we meet at the Hyatt Regency Hong Kong hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon.
While waiting for their two-hour class to end, she started playing with clay at the studio and was immediately smitten by the malleable yet immutable quality of the material.
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“When you first learn it, you feel like you want to control or shape it but that would never happen. Each clay has its own characteristics and personality and pacing,” says Lam, who has held exhibitions and sells some of her works online – the proceeds of which go to charity.
“It’s like you’re having a conversation with them and I’ve become a better listener because of clay.”
Working on her pottery has helped her embrace failure and confront her own fears and insecurities which, in turn, has brought honesty to her life and the roles that she takes on.
“I felt that clay was able to be very honest. Sometimes when you’re working on a piece, you might make a mistake. Before it goes in the kiln, you might adjust it. But then in the fire, because you’re at 1,250 degrees [Celsius, 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit], it goes back to its original shape because clay has memory,” she says.
“Things that you’re trying to hide, or you don’t want to confront, it comes back in the fire. I guess we just have to embrace our brokenness. And so I call it broken beautiful, right?
“I really have to not be scared to confront myself, or my inner thoughts and feelings. And so I felt like this is a really good medium for me to be honest in. I’m able to tell myself, even if I’m filming a movie or doing a magazine cover, maybe this might be my last. You really take your time, and you observe, and you really indulge yourself in that environment.”
“The character should have a big arc,” she says of her choices. “A lot of times, if I know exactly how I’m going to portray this character, then I’m not interested. If it’s something like, OK, I don’t know where this will take me, I’ll say let’s do it. And I never let strong women roles go, because I know they are gold.
“I don’t know if it’s serendipity or fate or whatever, but several films in my life have happened at the time where in my reality, I was experiencing more or less the same kind of emotional roller coaster as my character in the film.”
While filming Zinnia Flower, which is about a woman dealing with grief when her fiancé dies, the actress had to deal with the loss of her own father. It was cathartic being able to pour her own sadness into the role. “I felt that loss. I didn’t have to force it,” she says.
While she is fully engrossed in ceramics, sometimes travelling to Japan to learn under pottery masters, film still calls to her. “Every time I go on set, I feel like I’m home,” she says.
Being ambassador for the Hong Kong International Film Festival is one of the ways she wants to announce that she has not abandoned her film career. To her, curating exhibitions, ceramics and acting are part of the same world, one that provides her with an outlet and nourishment.
“I feel that we do need to promote the film festival because, since the pandemic, everyone’s just been so used to streaming. It’s really affected cinemas,” says Lam.
“I personally love going into the cinema because I feel that’s the way films should be consumed. I like the process of queuing up for popcorn, going in and then escaping reality for the next two hours.”
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“It’s a bit different because rhythm-wise, I had to make some adjustments. There’s always this ambiguous feeling when you’re speaking in Chinese, but with English everything is very expressive. It’s very in-your-face,” says Lam, who was born and grew up in Vancouver, Canada.
Just as her pottery has allowed her to accept mistakes, working with Taiwanese filmmakers who place more importance on rehearsing also gives her the space to experiment.
“With rehearsals, you don’t have to think about how to do it well, you have to think about how to do it differently. No one wants to fail, but during rehearsals, I feel like you really have to throw yourself out and just try. It doesn’t matter if you fail, because you’re just rehearsing,” she says.
Her artistic magnanimity, however, stops short of one thing: singing.
Lam started out in show business as a singer, releasing four albums in Taiwan between 1995 and 2003 as was the industry norm then. Asked if she will go back into the recording studio again, she exclaims with a laugh: “Never, never! It was a compromise with my management company then. Oh God, I did that so badly so I would never go back.”
The Hong Kong International Film Festival runs from March 28 to April 8.
