a graduate student, aspiring (counter-) archivist, and artist ☼

Lenora / Xuân Lam (b. 1996) is a Vietnamese-Canadian graduate student and aspiring (counter-) archivist based in Toronto (Tkarón:to), Ontario. Lenora’s praxis is to decolonize repositories through illuminating voices of the marginalized and silenced, challenging traditional archival theories of appraisal and collection. Within Lenora’s experience as a second-generation child of refugees, she learned early on throughout her childhood— that many identities like her own— have been created by intangible stories. How do we preserve our histories when they have been traumatized, fragmented, or erased? How can we imagine new ways of proving our existence a part from— or alongside our current archives? While the archive has always been defined as a vessel for our past, present, and futures, many of us can only imagine to be seen and heard. This is what Lenora would like to change through alternative methods such as zine-making, community cookbook collections, and poetry.

As an emerging artist, Lenora is moreover inspired by Vietnamese language. She creates visual poetry that reflects on personal experiences of cultural alterity. Her artworks utilize food and interdisciplinary practices as means to assert her identity. By fusing food, text and art, she aims to comment on how language and imaginary cultural boundaries can be invoked to illustrate the complexities of navigating the effects of displacement. Lenora’s primary artistic intention is to further create metaphors and playfulness in the multilingual nature of second-generation Vietnamese-Canadians; to portray the inevitable feeling of in-betweenness that arises from code-switching. Her exploration of the Self and how it is shaped or questioned when cultures collide seeps throughout her artistic practice, as she persistently ponders the validity of her own identity… while yearning to belong in a place called home.


Little fun facts for the mystics:

Big 3

Libra ☉ Gemini ☾ Scorpio ⇡ [Tropical]
Virgo ☉ Taurus ☾ Libra ⇡ [Sidereal]
Hasta, Rohini, Swati [Vedic Nakshatras]

Patterns

  • Sun-Moon-Uranus-Saturn Grand Air Trine/Kite

  • Pluto-Uranus-Saturn Talent Triangle 

Dominants

  • Fixed modality and Air/Fire

  • Mars, Sun, and Venus

  • Mercury Atmakaraka

    ┈┈⋆┈┈⋆┈┈⋆┈┈⋆┈┈⋆┈┈⋆

Chinese Zodiac: Fire Rat
Destiny Card: 8 of Diamonds
Tarot Card(s): The Hermit & Moon
Life Path Number: 9
Birth flower: Marigold
Birth stone: Opal