Why Hong Kong’s Pearl Lam Will Never Stop Betting On Flexibility Over Scale

Pearl Lam is not only one of Hong Kong’s leading gallerists but also a pioneering figure in the contemporary art scene. She may not have been the very first to open an international contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong—Alisan Fine Arts and Hanart TZ Gallery were there in the 1980s, bringing Chinese contemporary art to the city—but Lam was the first to champion a distinct vision of contemporary Chinese art that defied expectations and stereotypes. With a program that emphasizes hybridity and cross-cultural engagement, she demonstrated how the research and aesthetics of Chinese and Hong Kong artists, while deeply rooted in tradition, shared significant connections with Western postwar movements. For her, contextualizing these practices within a broader international dialogue felt essential, and that vision has underpinned a successful three-decade career. Today, Lam is a gallerist, curator, collector and cultural connector whose work has significantly shaped how Asian art is presented, understood and collected.

Ahead of Art Basel Hong Kong, Observer met with the legendary dealer and artist advocate in New York to discuss her journey and how the Hong Kong art ecosystem and its market have changed since she opened her gallery. Lam’s path in the arts was anything but direct. She moved from Hong Kong to mainland China in the 1990s, looking for adventure, only to be pulled back by her father, who had other plans—specifically, for her to join the family’s real estate business.

“When I returned to Hong Kong,” Lam said, “I told my father I wanted to open a gallery, and he said, ‘Over my dead body.'” Instead, he suggested she go to Shanghai and become a property developer, with a salary and benefits that were hard to refuse. She went without speaking a word of Mandarin. “I couldn’t speak it, and my Chinese was at an elementary level. It was a disaster.” But during her time in Shanghai, she met a local artist who would introduce her to the burgeoning art scene. With her comfortable salary, Lam began collecting artworks, eventually helping to fund exhibitions and actively contributing to the nascent Chinese contemporary art scene. She had promised her father she wouldn’t open a gallery, but that didn’t stop her from organizing pop-up exhibitions in Hong Kong.

Those early avant-garde shows in Hong Kong in the 1990s mixed design and contemporary Chinese art in a way few had dared to attempt in either the traditional Chinese art market or internationally. “My first pop-up exhibitions were in spaces no one understood as ‘pop-ups’ at the time,” Lam clarified. She organized a handful of exhibitions annually until the Asian financial crisis of 1998, when her father told her in no uncertain terms “to stop being frivolous” and focus on the family business. Through it all, however, she continued to sponsor exhibitions in Shanghai’s museums and galleries.

Then, around 2003, during the China Year in France, the French cultural embassy in Hong Kong invited her to mount an exhibition. Lam had spent time in France during the SARS outbreak, traveling between Paris and Hong Kong, and was happy to oblige. She titled the show “La France Mandarin: The French Influence on Chinese Art.”

“I started with a 2,000-square-foot museum, but by the time I finished, the exhibition was 20,000 square feet,” she said. Her early experiences funding and supporting shows in China, combined with her travels between Europe and Asia, had brought her to a key realization: international definitions of Chinese contemporary art were mostly concentrated on “political pop”—namely the artists of the post-Tiananmen Square movement. She found that limiting. “At that point, I thought, ‘Maybe I should create a platform to show a different kind of Chinese contemporary art, especially abstract artists.'”

Her decision to open a gallery in 2005 was driven by her passion for abstraction and her desire to challenge Western assumptions about design and art. Pearl Lam initially focused on design, introducing Chinese craft in a way that contrasted with the Western emphasis on technology and innovation. Over time, it evolved to represent Chinese contemporary artists—particularly abstract artists—and to foster cultural dialogue between East and West.

This became the foundation of everything Lam would build: a platform for Chinese art that was neither defined by Western expectations nor confined to them—one that insisted on both the specificity of Chinese artistic traditions and their deep resonances with the broader world. According to Lam, in traditional Chinese culture and across much of Asia, there is no distinction between craftsmanship and artistry. “This is also the gallery’s philosophy,” she said. “I believe in the integration of art and design, which is different from the Western hierarchy that separates them. That was my way of opening a conversation and challenging Western definitions.”

Lam never received any formal training in art or design. She simply followed her passion, learned from the people she connected with, looked at art relentlessly, pursued independent research and spoke with curators—essentially, learning by doing. A pivotal moment came when Lam struggled with the language barrier while reading English catalogues on Chinese contemporary art. Her understanding of Chinese was limited, and without tools like Google Translate, working through lengthy Chinese texts was a significant challenge. “It took me several days to finish essays that would usually take people just an hour,” she recalled. But when she finally understood a particular essay by Professor Gao Minglu, everything clicked.

With the same audacity and determination that have guided her throughout her career, Lam arranged to meet him in Pittsburgh. The two spent three hours together in a canteen, during which Lam peppered him with questions about contemporary Chinese art. “He was baffled by why someone would travel so far just for knowledge, but I told him that knowledge was important,” she said. This meeting led her to realize she needed to do something to address the ongoing misunderstanding of contemporary Chinese art—a realization that eventually led her to found the China Art Foundation in 2000. “I’m not shy about admitting that I didn’t know much back then, but I was always eager to learn. I ask, I study and I find out on my own through books.”

To Lam, art is the best form of communication. “When you look at an artwork, you understand that each artist is communicating their own expression,” she reflected. “Through their work, you learn about their background, their journey, and, in a way, you are learning history—personal history and personal feelings.” This is, to her, what matters most, especially in today’s world, which is full of conflict. “Art, as soft power, is the best way to communicate with each other. Cultural dialogue is so important.”

Three decades later, Pearl Lam Galleries’ international program continues to reflect this mission of intercultural dialogue, expanding it to new geographies. “When we talk about cultural dialogue, we must have international artists. We need to have African artists, too. Cultural dialogue is about learning from each other—understanding the roots of each culture. Artwork is one of the best media for that exchange.”

In recent years, Lam was among the first dealers in Hong Kong to spotlight African artists, even as mainland China’s ties to the continent deepened. Her fascination with African contemporary art developed organically, beginning with a trip to Nigeria that completely shifted her perspective. “I’d never liked figurative art before, but after spending time in Africa and visiting studios, I became obsessed with African art,” she said, adding that she was struck by how much African art incorporates craft and decoration, prompting her to begin collecting figurative works.

As for how the art scene in Hong Kong has changed, Lam shared the following anecdote: “I remember when I opened my first show in Hong Kong at Color Building. There were queues around the block, thousands of people coming in. Now, it’s not the same; there are no longer thousands. In those early years, foreign galleries began to come to Hong Kong, and it became the heart of Asia.” The city’s cultural infrastructure wasn’t always so healthy; it lacked the great museums and vibrant gallery scene that characterize its art landscape today. “To truly have a great art center in Asia, you need a major museum,” Lam said, pointing to M+’s opening in 2021. “We have M+, we have Tai Kwun, and actually, the Hong Kong Museum is also very good. We now have the full infrastructure in place. So, it’s really a great time for art in Hong Kong.”

Lam did admit that the trade war between the U.S. and China, combined with rising geopolitical tensions and economic volatility, has deeply affected the internationalism that long characterized Hong Kong. The U.S.-China conflict has discouraged many Western collectors from engaging with the Hong Kong market. International museum directors and curators are present, but international trustees and collectors have become scarce in recent years, even during Hong Kong Art Week.

Lam also highlighted how the art markets in Hong Kong and China are slowly recovering after the real estate crisis. “It takes time. I feel no one truly understands what the market is like today: there’s technology, digitalization and rising shipping costs,” she said, noting how buyers today also have a very different approach. “More than 90 percent of buyers are investors now; they’re speculators. They want to look at the auction market first before buying a piece of art. They want to see whether there’s Western validation. It’s very different from how it used to be.”

Yet she is encouraged by the ongoing shift in the demographics of buyers she has noticed. “Younger collectors are entering the scene, especially in Hong Kong. They want to build collections, and they’re coming to the gallery for that purpose. The only difference is that younger Chinese collectors want to follow the trends coming from China. I think this is not good for Chinese culture. It’s a shift away from the deeper, more traditional values of art.”

Approaching this year’s art week and Art Basel Hong Kong, she is broadly optimistic. To Lam, the best response to uncertain conditions is a gallery model that is flexible, hybrid and globally responsive, where impact matters more than scale. She sees the ability to adapt rapidly to cultural, geopolitical and economic shifts as essential. Consequently, her gallery is evolving into what she described as a “global platform”—still based in Hong Kong but with an even more flexible and reactive international perspective. She has returned to the pop-up model she pioneered, at least until she finds a permanent space that meets her needs. “The challenge in Hong Kong is finding a space with high ceilings,” she explained, adding that permanent multi-space galleries feel increasingly outdated in a market that demands extreme agility.

Pearl Lam Galleries will maintain a flagship space in Shanghai, anchoring Lam’s long-standing commitment to the Chinese market and East-West cultural dialogue, while mounting exhibitions in key cultural and commercial centers. Timed with Art Basel Hong Kong, the gallery will stage an ambitious solo exhibition of Chinese artist Qiu Anxiong, whose work blends English and Chinese cultural influences through animation, paintings and sculptures that explore the deepening fracture between humans and nature. “His work explores civilization, and it will be fascinating to see how people react to it,” Lam said. At Art Basel Hong Kong, the gallery will present an overview of its program, featuring artists from China, Africa, Europe and the U.K. Among the highlights will be work by Nigerian artist Alimi Adewale, whom the gallery spotlighted earlier at Art Basel Miami Beach with a display of his vibrant portraits of African identity, and Su Xiaobai, a Chinese artist who will have a prominent presence in Venice with a solo exhibition at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel. Lam has worked with him for over a decade, and his international moment of recognition stands as further testament to the gallery’s role in championing Chinese artists in their early careers who are now celebrated internationally.

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