[2][3] She began focusing on community engagement and socially responsible art at the time of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong in 2003.
She sculpted in wood, metals and glass, and created more expansive installations from items such as cough-drop tins, tree branches, and string.
Some of her more avant-garde sculptures were object dialogues created at a residency in Hualien, Taiwan in 2003, or the ornate mosquito nets she sewed the following year on a cultural exchange with women in a Kenyan village.
The project features large-scale sculptural objects using discarded or recycled materials such as old fabric, leftover crate wood, and scrap metal.
[12] Jaffa Lam Laam Collaborative: Weaver (2013) is a community art project that involves women from grassroots organizations as co-creators of artworks.
[16] Lam's mixed-media installation work, Rocking in Mini Zen Garden (2020), was part of the disCONNECT HK exhibition of pandemic-related artwork.
By installing the artwork in a toilet in an historical tenement building, Lam attempts to create a safe space amidst uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lam received several awards including 40 UNDER 40, Perspective Magazine (2010); Freeman Foundation Asian Artists’ Fellowship (2009); Urban Glass Visiting Artist Fellowship (2007); Asia Cultural Council Fellowship (2006); Award for “Artists in Neighbourhood Scheme II” of Hong Kong Art Promotion Office (2002); International Art Contest, Mixed Media, Hong Kong (1997); Hong Kong Creative Paper Works Competition, Mixed Media (1997); and Y. S. Hui Arts Collection Award, Print Making (1996).