In Kenneth Tam’s solo show, The Medallion at Bridget Donahue, new works by the artist are installed in the elongated gallery in such a way that the whole show could be read as a single work. The floor pieces are installed on top of or connected to 370,000 Recitations (2025), a piece made out of wooden bead seat covers that viewers can step on. At one end of the gallery, Dissolved personal archive (2015-2024) (2025), an AI-generated 8-minute video, loops on a taxi-top video display, like the ones many Yellow Taxis have in NYC, showing the same video on both sides of the display. The video is a source of bright light in the dimly lit show. In it, human figures are being dissolved, but occasionally, the objects that the figures use get dissolved as well.
“Kenneth Tam The Medallion,” installation view. Photo: Jason Mandella
At the other end of the gallery, The Medallion (2025), a two-channel video projected onto opposite walls, provokes the viewers to move since they can’t see both screens without turning. In the film, taxi drivers describe the extreme difficulties of being in debt, with one of the drivers mentioning how his medallion was taken. Medallions are the permit cab drivers need, which can be transferred, bought, sold, and taken as collateral. NYC taxi medallions lost most of their value when unregulated tech businesses invaded the industry. The film gives space for drivers to describe their experience of the taxi medallion crisis, a crisis experienced by immigrant workers that has pushed drivers to suicide.
At moments in the film when the drivers are speaking, the opposite screen shows an underwater scene where a few bodies are moving their legs. In some, you can’t see if the head and upper body are underwater, too, and in others, the head is barely above water. The video also shows the drivers and the artist moving together slowly as their bodies touch. At other moments, the artist and drivers appear by themselves, stretching and moving slowly.
In the first chapters of his famous book on debt, David Graeber contradicts the popular origin stories about debt with anthropological evidence. Similarly, Tam’s approach in The Medallion brings stories to the surface — stories that contradict ongoing hegemonic stories around debt.
Through the gallery, different floor pieces are in dialogue with one another, and the videos further explore themes while emphasizing the high referentiality of the art objects.
Kenneth Tam, “It is no use to worry (expansion reservoir),” 2025, hand-blown glass, wooden beaded seat cover, 3D-printed PLA, electronics, wiring, LEDs, monofilament, metal enclosure, 10 × 15 × 48 inches
It is no use to worry (expansion reservoir), It is no use to worry (coolant overflow), It is no use to worry (prayer wheel), and It is no use to worry (radiator reservoir), all from 2025, continue the gesture of using beaded seat covers, with one section of the wooden beads being replaced by plastic ones, lighting those plastic beads, and placing hand-blown glass sculptures, a dashboard prayer wheel, and a used radiator coolant container on top of the lighted sections.
Kenneth Tam, “Bag (orange),” 2025, aqua-resin, pigment, 12 × 16 × 23 inches
Lost It All (2025) appears as a regular man’s shoe, but it has been resined, signaling the bodies lost to systemic suicides — results of the neocolonial capitalism inherent in the taxi medallion crisis. Tam’s Bag pieces also received resin treatment and are reminiscent of Liz Magor’s work, but the resined fabrics are empty in some of Tam’s work. The works are also reminiscent of emerging artists like Lola Carlander, who plays with the boundaries between reality, perception, and symbolism on resined sculptures that appear as ready-mades.
In Anxiety Clock (2025), the plastic beads are illuminated in the red typography of some digital clocks and taxi meters. The numbers, letters, and symbols appear in ways that don’t always make sense. At times, the piece also abruptly changes colors throughout the beads, breaking the red clock structure into quickly changing colorful lights. These lights illuminate other areas of the show for a few moments before stopping and returning to the taxi meter structure with no noticeable pattern.
Collision (2025) is an arrangement of objects on the floor that incorporates car debris, a man’s shoe, a wooden Guanyin hanging car charm, and, significantly, a taxi medallion.
The exploration of delicate themes using found objects and sculptures in ways that highlight the representational referentiality, with a focus on how bodies will perceive these gestures, might at moments help remove from Tam’s exploration the causational systemic circumstances that have aggravated the situations for taxi drivers.
The Medallion is on view at Bridget Donahue, New York, through March 8.
