The Twelve Wandering Sisters

Artist Ho Tam made The Twelve Wandering Sisters in 2022. It is an inkjet print on paper, measuring 48 centimetres 
wide by 33 centimeters high.In the story Tam wrote for this artwork, the twelve wandering sisters are guardians in 
the sky, guiding the people from afar, keeping them on the right path.

This artwork illustrates a prairie landscape with twelve different heads of Queen Elizabeth II floating across the sky. 
A flat, prairie landscape fills the entire frame. It is a blue-green colour. The point of view is eye-level. The top three quarters 
of the image is a dramatic prairie sky with towering clouds in contrasting shades. At the horizon there is bright sky beneath 
dark-bellied cloud. Angled lines indicating falling rain run from the cloud to the ground. 

The foreground is farm fields divided vertically from the bottom edge by a straight dirt road. As a viewer, you would be standing 
on the right side of the road which continues behind you. At the bottom of the frame, the road is a third the width of the print. 
It quickly dwindles in perspective until it reaches a point at the horizon roughly one-third of the way across from the left. 
Telephone polls run along both sides of the road. The ditches are full of thick, tall, lush grasses with the occasional crooked 
fence post protruding. The eye is drawn toward the horizon where the radiating lines of the road, ditches and poles meet. 
The road ends where a wheat elevator stands as a small, distant silhouette. It is a vertical rectangle like an office building but 
with a slope-roofed extension on the right side. The rest of the horizon is a line of bush and trees with occasional rooftops. 
The angle of the distant rain and the exaggerated perspective of road and poles communicate a sense of vibrancy to a static landscape. 
Twelve heads float in an arc like a rainbow across the middle of the sky—Tam’s 12 wandering sisters. They are all portraits of the same 
White woman but from different times in her life. She is Queen Elizabeth II. The images are in many colours and face slightly different 
directions. Eight are wearing crowns. The faces have varying expressions from serious dignity to impassivity and to laughter. 
Most of the sisters are looking toward the viewer. 

In this artwork, Tam playfully explores the concept of monarchy through portraits of Queen Elizabeth II taken from the currency of various 
Commonwealth nations. They may be symbols that represent a nation’s identity, but what does it mean when that symbol is a monarch 
from a far-away country?