Artists | Karen Tam
Excerpt of The Girl from Ipanema
Click here to watch an excerpt of The Boy from Ipanema
It was a great experience to work with such a diverse group of students whose energy and enthusiasm was matched by their creativity. I have learnt as much as the students from the whole process and this has led to new projects since and in a similar vein to “Songs from Ipanema.” Thanks for a wonderful experience!
Karen Tam
Projects
2008 : Songs from Ipanema
Karen Tam’s dual project, The Girl from Ipanema, and The Boy from Ipanema, was hosted at Liberty High School Academy for Newcomers in Chelsea, a school that meets the special needs of newly-arrived non-English speaking immigrant students.
Ms. Tam created a meeting point for different cultures through music by organizing the students into groups which translated the song "The girl from Ipanema" into their home languages of Polish, French, Spanish, Indian and Arabic. After translating the lyrics, each group brainstormed ideas for a video and put together props for their productions. All of the students were filmed singing the song in their own language, and in the final work, Tam inserted pictures of their written translations.
The Girl from Ipanema was exhibited at the Chelsea Art Museum.
Funding for this project has been provided in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with The NYC Council.Karen Tam
- born
- Montreal, Canada
- bred
Fine Arts at the Dawson College, Montréal, Québec (DEC)
The Concordia University, Montréal, Québec (BA)
Sculpture at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (MA)
- base
- London, United Kingdom
- web
- www.karentam.ca
- focus
- Installation, video
