Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic \u201cThe market is very slow\u201d, says Pearl Lam. The Hong Kong gallerist, a dominant figure in the region for decades, has been panegyrised as \u201ca powerhouse of China\u2019s art world\u201d. From her salad days staging pop-ups to a pre-pandemic peak of presiding over a spread of eponymous galleries across Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, she is intimately familiar with the art market\u2019s fickle dips and dives. \u201cBut this time,\u201d she warns, \u201cI think it\u2019s bad.\u201d\u00a0In the art world, it pays to be irrepressibly optimistic in the face of grim realities. But Lam \u2014 instantly recognisable by her stiff, aubergine-coloured bob \u2014 is in preservation mode, as she puts it. She is scaling back her art fairs this year and waiting for a \u201cbetter time\u201d to migrate to her new three-storey space in Hong Kong\u2019s Central district, which, when it opens, will be in addition to the two she already runs in Shanghai.\u00a0New Chinese collectors want to buy \u2018whatever the west is buying\u2019, says Lam. \u2018If you have a George Condo, I must have a bigger one \u2014 and I must have two\u2019Art is among the casualties of the social and political upheavals that have convulsed Hong Kong in the past decade \u2014 from the pro-democracy protests to the Covid-induced shutdowns. An intensifying chokehold of regulations has prompted many companies and family offices to leave Hong Kong altogether. The beneficiary of this fallout, at least in the realm of the art market, has been Singapore. The success of Art SG, Singapore\u2019s flagship art fair, and the recent proliferation of private art foundations and galleries demonstrates that the city state is becoming a serious competitor.Lam is sceptical of the hype. \u201cSingapore is always competing with Hong Kong, all right,\u201d she says. She has been at the centre of both markets. Between 2014 and 2019, she oversaw two sleek Singapore galleries. Lam had to shutter them because the hotspots that housed them \u2014 Gillman Barracks and Dempsey Hill \u2014 preferred \u201cfood and beverage, and I didn\u2019t have the staff\u201d.That experience may have contributed to her cautiousness about Singapore\u2019s long-term prospects. \u201cSingapore, around south-east Asia, is an important hub,\u201d she concedes. \u201cBut its infrastructure is a problem.\u201d Lam argues that it will take more than attracting collectors from neighbouring countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam to sustain Singapore\u2019s rise. Strong institutions, she contends, are the catalysts for \u201cgreat collectors and great artists\u201d. And raising those institutions requires financial munificence. This is a problem because Asia, in Lam\u2019s words, sees \u201cmuseums as profitmaking\u201d ventures. \u201cYou cannot have great collectors,\u201d she says, \u201cwithout really great museums.\u201d And great museums need sizeable state support. The Singaporean government, she explains, \u201cis not giving enough support to the art scene. The National Gallery [of Singapore] does not have enough funding.\u201dLam holds up M+, Hong Kong\u2019s colossal art institution, as a beau id\u00e9al for others. It not only \u201canchors a culture scene\u201d, but with Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Palace Museum and Tai Kwun, it makes Hong Kong a \u201cmuch better platform than Singapore\u201d. The transformation of Hong Kong\u2019s art world, which Lam both witnessed and shaped, was frustratingly glacial. She was born in Hong Kong, the daughter of property tycoon Lim Por-yen. When she first started staging temporary shows in her hometown in the early 1990s \u2014 after studying law and accountancy in the UK (and striking a deal with her father in which she promised also to work in the family business) \u2014 Lam found the territory to be a \u201ccultural desert\u201d. She remembers \u201cmuseum patron groups\u201d bypassing Hong Kong and going \u201cto Beijing and Shanghai\u201d.These early groups were the first to pick up contemporary Chinese art as though it were \u201ca tourist souvenir\u201d. \u201cThe Germans were first, then the French and Americans,\u201d she says. \u201cThe British came very late.\u201d They had no idea that what they took home would swiftly become a prized part of a buying frenzy that would help thrust on to the global stage artists who until then had been largely unknown outside the region. Lam sees the turning point as Sotheby\u2019s first New York auction of contemporary Asian art in 2006. Initially, I could not appreciate figurative art. Something in me evolved through learning about other peoplePrices for works suddenly skyrocketed. Lam\u2019s fortunes soared with them. The day before the sale, Lam \u201cbought some photographs from an artist\u201d for $500. The next day, she says, they were being auctioned for as much as $80,000. As one of the few dealers who had been supporting Chinese artists for decades, Lam\u2019s phone was inundated with calls from potential buyers. \u201c\u2018We want this. We want more this and this,\u2019\u201d she recounts them saying. \u201cEvery American gallery wanted to have a Chinese artist.\u201dThe high of those days \u2014 when collectors raced to acquire works by artists such as Zeng Fanzhi, New York galleries scooped up Chinese talent, and major institutions, from MoMA to Guggenheim, staged exhibitions devoted to Chinese art \u2014 seem a world away from the slog entailed in engaging international attention today. \u201cNo one shows Chinese artists any more,\u201d Lam says plaintively. This, she suggests, is a byproduct of the deepening rift between the US and China. Tariffs currently impose a 7.5 per cent levy on any artworks made in China that enter the US. \u201cWhich gallery wants to pay a tariff for Chinese art?\u201d Lam asks.The domestic market has also shifted. Where once Chinese political pop art was highly sought after, there is now, Lam says, a new class of young, \u201csophisticated\u201d collectors who, returning home with new ideas from studies abroad, are eager to pour their parents\u2019 money into \u201cwhatever the west is buying\u201d. It\u2019s a trend powered, Lam says, by ego. \u201cIf you have a George Condo, I must have a bigger one \u2014 and I must have two.\u201dLam too has diversified of late. She has always aspired to bridge, to borrow her gallery\u2019s slogan, \u201cEast and West\u201d: she takes pride in showing heroes of Chinese abstraction such as Zhu Jinshi alongside, say, acclaimed American artist Leonardo Drew. Recently, however, her roster has become more focused on artists from Africa \u2014 such as Lagos-born painter and sculptor Alimi Adewale whose work she displayed last year at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London\u2019s sole international art fair devoted to work from the continent. The experience of working with these artists has proved to be educational. \u201cInitially, I could not appreciate figurative art,\u201d Lam admits. That \u201cblock\u201d has now vanished. \u201cSomething in me evolved through learning about other people.\u201d So eager is she to broaden her horizons that, during her last visit to Johannesburg, Lam \u201cvisited 80-something artists in four days.\u201d\u00a0Lam is clearly thrilled by this tilt \u2014 by its \u201cboom, boom, boom\u201d, as she calls it. She relishes her itinerant lifestyle (\u201cPearlthetornado\u201d is her X handle and \u201cPearltheworld\u201d is her Instagram ID). \u201cI don\u2019t do holidays \u2014 I can\u2019t,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know how to go to the spa.\u201d Over the course of a coming week, Lam tells me, she will be in Paris, London, New York and LA. She is out every day. \u201cAnd if I\u2019m not, then I\u2019m giving dinner parties.\u201d (Her soir\u00e9es are fabled affairs. One of her homes has a 66-seat dining table and she is known to host 10-course suppers.) The most recent result of Lam\u2019s gregariousness is The Pearl Lam Podcast. Listen to it and you hear her cordially interrogate her guests \u2014 from storied collectors Don and Mera Rubell to two-Michelin-star chef St\u00e9phanie Le Quellec. If her questions seem frank and frivolous in the same breath, her reactions are often disarmingly earnest. On the off chance that the market does not recover, Lam is, wittingly or not, crafting a smart exit plan.\u00a0pearllam.comFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic \u201cThe market is very slow\u201d, says Pearl Lam. The Hong Kong gallerist, a dominant figure in the region for decades, has been panegyrised as \u201ca powerhouse of China\u2019s art world\u201d. From her salad days staging pop-ups to a pre-pandemic peak of presiding over a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-247366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247368,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247366\/revisions\/247368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}