1. Box. 29.21cm x 35.56cm x 2.54cm
2. Occupying Chinatown Book
3. Love Letters Folio:
3a. Love Letters Story. 41.91cm x 36.2cm
3b/c. Two original watercolour paintings by Soo Ying Tse. 38cm x 29cm
3d. One original letter mailed to Soo Ying Tse
4. Red Envelope:
4b. USB Flash card (4gb) with three video works:
Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shade (1988) 90min w/ sound
Motherʼs Cupboard (2020) 13min w/ sound
Chinese Only Bumpers (2019) 1min
5. Two bookmarks
Paul Wong (2021) ISBN: 978-0-9694777-7-8 Edition of 500 Hardcover: Black linen with silver deboss
approx. 110 colour illustrations 180 pages 29.85cm x 23.5cm x 1.59cm, 1kg
“Paul Wong’s Occupying Chinatown is deeply moving and subtly shocking. The life of Paul’s mother Suk-Fong is a kind of pilgrim’s progress of one young Chinese woman through a 20th century journey of deep despair and strange fulfillment. Her story focuses the life of a Chinatown, of alienation, of exclusion – all told in the context of one family’s struggle to communicate and make its bonds mean something, I am so glad that this book commemorates an exhibition which laid bare the eternal bonds of family, the personal cost of alienation and the salvation of identity.”
-The Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson
Paul Wong’s Occupying Chinatown, is a beautifully detailed, limited edition hardcover book, fully bilingual in English and Simplified Chinese, focusing on several of Wong’s major artworks exploring Chinese-Canadian identity and his engagement with Vancouver’s Chinese communities. With full colour photos and documentation of Wong’s artwork as well as three original essays, Occupying Chinatown is an evocative exploration of language, amnesia, and cultural displacement, inspired by 900 letters sent to Suk-Fong Wong, Paul Wong’s mother, over the course of 65 years.
Within this remarkable 180 page cloth-bound book, Wong’s essay “Suk Fong, How Are You?” (淑芳你好嘛?) takes a closer look at the family histories contained within the letters, while Dr Christopher Lee’s essay “Reading Letters, Reading with Trust” (阅读书信，以信读信) reflects on the process of interpreting a selection of these letters with his students. Debbie Cheung’s “Private to Private to Public: A New Collective Experience of Chinatown” (推己及人：唐人街新的共同体验) details Wong’s year-long residency at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden through which these private letters offered an opportunity for the local Chinese community to consider their shared stories and their rapidly changing Chinatown.
Below: Vancouver Biennale presents Occupying Chinatown pop-up exhibition and book signing, Nov 6, 2021. Photo credit Paul Wong and Christian Yves Jones.
Occupying Chinatown finalist for 2022 City of Vancouver Award
The Occupying Chinatown (OC) book was a finalist for the 2022 City of VancouverBookAward. The OC Book was one of five books in the running to win a $3,000 prize funded by Publishing Reserve, which was established in 1977 as a permanent legacy for Vancouver writers and publishers.
The annual City of VancouverBookAward has been recognizing authors of excellence of any genre since 1989. These authors contribute to the appreciation and understanding of Vancouver‘s diversity, history, unique character, or the achievements of its residents. Award was presented as part of the 2022 Vancouver Writers Fest.
Paul Wong, 2020
Round table & 4 vintage 1950s chair
covered in custom designed digital printed textile with letters from Suk Fong’s father
Table centrepiece, arrangement of cooking utensils, knives, ceramic dishes, and table games: mahjong, dominoes
Museum of Vancouver
Nov 19, 2020 – Jan 2022
Mother’s Table (2020) was part of A Seat at the Table, Chinese Immigration and British Columbia at the Museum of Vancouver. A Seat at the Table explored historical and contemporary stories of Chinese Canadians in BC and their struggles for belonging. It looks to food and restaurant culture as an entry point to feature stories that reveal the great diversity of immigrant experience and of the communities immigrants develop. The exhibition is an opportunity to consider the contributions that Chinese migrants and their descendants have made to British Columbia, a province built from the interaction of successive and concurrent waves of migration and uninterrupted occupation by Indigenous peoples.
Paul Wong, 2020
Mixed Media
Tongue & Groove Painted Wall
Vintage Men’s Cooking Uniform
Vintage Woman’s Waitress Uniform
Club Cafe silkscreen print (1996)
Corner Table & Chair
Museum of Vancouver
Nov 19, 2020 – Jan 2022
Chinese Cafe Diorama (2020) was part of A Seat at the Table, Chinese Immigration and British Columbia at the Museum of Vancouver. A Seat at the Table explored historical and contemporary stories of Chinese Canadians in BC and their struggles for belonging. It looks to food and restaurant culture as an entry point to feature stories that reveal the great diversity of immigrant experience and of the communities immigrants develop. The exhibition is an opportunity to consider the contributions that Chinese migrants and their descendants have made to British Columbia, a province built from the interaction of successive and concurrent waves of migration and uninterrupted occupation by Indigenous peoples.
Paul Wong, 2020 Mixed media installation
93 jars of herbs & medicines in vitrine with descriptions
12 min. video projected with sound
2 photographs in light boxes 4′ x 6′
Museum of Vancouver
Nov 19, 2020 – Jan 2022
Mother’s Cupboard was previously presented in three variations, Transit Shelter Series (2018-2019), Private/Public/Lives, (New Delhi, India, 2019) and as part of the exhibition 淑芳你好嘛 (Suk-Fong Nay Ho Mah) / Suk-Fong, How Are You? (2019). In 2020, Mother’s Cupboard was part of A Seat at the Table, Chinese Immigration and British Columbia at the Museum of Vancouver. A Seat at the Table explored historical and contemporary stories of Chinese Canadians in BC and their struggles for belonging. It looks to food and restaurant culture as an entry point to feature stories that reveal the great diversity of immigrant experience and of the communities immigrants develop. The exhibition is an opportunity to consider the contributions that Chinese migrants and their descendants have made to British Columbia, a province built from the interaction of successive and concurrent waves of migration and uninterrupted occupation by Indigenous peoples.
The 2020 iteration of Mother’s Cupboard features 83 jars from Suk-Fong’s cupboards. Viewers were able to appreciate Suk-Fong’s meticulous organization, labelling, and categorization of her herbs and elixirs contained in recycled western -brand jars, ie. Nabob Coffee, Classico, Miracle Whip, and Taster’s Choice jars. The exhibition also included the Mother’s CupboardVideo (2020). Recorded in 2012 in her kitchen, Suk-Fong takes her son through her collection of Chinese medicines, herbs, and ingredients. She speaks in her first language, Toisanese, and describes what her homemade compounds are used for. This includes “loik doy dew,” a deer-antler, alcohol-based elixir that she adds to soups. Most of her ingredients can be readily found in Chinese herbal stores.
A Seat at the Table – Official Exhibition Catalogue
12″ x 9″ x 0.5″, 167 Pages
Curators & Editors: Denise Fong, Viviane Gosselin, Henry Yu
Printer: Friesens Corporation
Published in 2021
ISBN: 978-1-895817-29-4
$45.00
This engaging and thought-provoking publication offers a rich record of the themes, stories, images and objects presented in the multi-sited, multilingual, award winning exhibition A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia.
These exhibitions, co-produced by the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) and the University of British Columbia in partnership with the Chinese Canadian Museum, opened at the Hon Hsing Athletic Association building in Vancouver Chinatown in August of 2020 and at the Museum of Vancouver in November 2020.
The interplay between the two created a rich, engaging and multidimensional picture of Chinese immigration into British Columbia.
A Seat at the Table, Chinese Immigration and British Columbia exhibition at The Museum of Vancouver has been extended until January 2023.
OCCUPYING CHINATOWN’s exhibition space within the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden was its Scholar’s Study, where traditionally in China, it was the pavilion for the arts: music, theatre, dance, poetry, and calligraphy. The goal of the residency was to activate this space and others within the Garden with contemporary art. The first exhibit in the Scholar’s Study was Wong’s 1988 video, Ordinary Shadows Chinese Shade. This work explores the second-generation Chinese-Canadian perspective on the Chinese in the new world, Canada, and China, and documents one of Wong’s early visits to his ancestral village where he, along with his mother Susan Suk-Fong Wong, recorded the everyday lives of his relatives. In fact, many of these relatives penned the very letters to his mother that inspired this residency. The video screened on continuous loop at the Garden’s Scholar’s Study, and was viewable online from April 22 to June 11.
Wong also launched the OCCUPYING CHINATOWN studio to the public with an open house. The OCCUPYING CHINATOWN studio is located two blocks away from the Garden. The studio was the staging and production workspace for the creation of Wong’s primary works as part of the residency. The open house featured research materials, and works-in-progress inspired by Suk-Fong’s 700 letters, photographs, and ephemera.
This open house featured a past work by filmmaker Karin Lee, Shattered, a 2-channel video installation recreating the 1907 Anti-Asian Chinatown riots that took place on September 7, 1907 in Chinatown and Japantown. Shattered was co-presented with the SUM Gallery, who presented the Chinatown-channel in its gallery next door. The OCCUPYING CHINATOWN studio presented the Japantown-channel in its gallery.
The OCCUPYING CHINATOWN studio and SUM Gallery are apart of a new cultural hub occupying three floors of the Sun Wah Centre. This is the first project of BC Artscape, a non-profit urban development organization. It opened its doors in March, 2018. The Sun Wah Centre was originally built and occupied as a mall, restaurants, a supermarket, and offices. BC Artscape has leased 50 000 square feet and has renovated it into 55 studios, workshop spaces, galleries, and offices for artists, arts organizations, and non-profit and community-service organizations. The project was funded by all three levels of government and the private sector providing long-term affordable rent for its 70 tenants.
Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shade
Paul Wong, 1988
89 minutes, colour, in Chinese with English subtitles video
Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shade (1988), curated by Paul Wong, was exhibited in the Scholar’s Study in the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden as part of the launch, and spring exhibition of 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN from April 22 to July 6, 2018.
Paul Wong uses his second-generation Chinese-Canadian perspective to frame the Chinese here in the new world, Canada, and in the mother-land, China. This is an intimate, personal view. Through their “family network” and several trips to the People’s Republic of China, Wong and his mother Suk-Fong gained access to the everyday, non-exotic world of the Chinese. A picture emerges of displaced cultures and traditions in transition.
This experimental documentary includes recordings made in Canada and China from 1982 and 1986 recorded on 8mm video. In 1982, Suk-Fong Wong is interviewed in Canada about her expectations of returning to China, and seeing her siblings for the first time in 35 years. Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shades takes us through Pearl River Delta, to agricultural Toisan and Hoiping, small town San fu, and the major urban city Guangzhou. We encounter friends and family, including many of the subjects who penned the very letters to Suk-Fong.
Much has changed in the 35 years since this material was recorded. Cantonese and specifically the Toisan dialect spoken by the subjects in this work, has become a disappearing dialect spoken in Vancouver’s Chinatown. It used to be a dominant language.
Saltwater City – Vancouver / 咸水埠温哥华 (Haam Sui Fow Wun Goh Wah) Paul Wong, 2018 72″ x 10″ x 10″, neon, glass and steel
72″ x 10″, painted vintage wood
Saltwater City – Vancouver / 咸水埠温哥华 is a public art work that was temporarily exhibited in two versions at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden during the year-long OCCUPYING CHINATOWN residency. The neon was exhibited in the Scholar’s Study. The painted vintage wood version was hung over the exterior south moon gate on Keefer Street. The neon is now permanently installed at the rear of 475 Main Street.
Saltwater City – Vancouver / 咸水埠温哥华honours Chinatown’s history of language and culture, and literally translates to Salt-Water-City-Warm-Older Brother-Chinese. Haam Sui Fow (咸水埠) was the historic name Chinatown’s early settlers called Vancouver. Wun Goh Wah (温哥华) is the modern-day Chinese name for the city, a phonetic approximation of its English name “Van-cou-ver.” The works pays homage to the history of the city, and the lost history of Chinatown.
These temporary exhibitions were used to generate discussion about the artwork, and to generate interest in finding a permanent site for the neon within Chinatown. Wong produced 16 photoshopped renderings of different sites that included well-known historical buildings, facades in prominent locations, as well as buildings in less obvious places such as in alleyways and on side-streets.
The exhibition of these locations included an opportunity for the public to vote on their favourite sites. The permanent installation of the neon is in the rear of 475 Main Street, a private building owned by the Lee family, Prospero Group. The neon is situated in the north-south alley connecting Hastings and Pender Streets. This location was the original site of Vancouver’s City Hall from 1898 to 1929. The neon piece also overlooks a perpendicular alley that runs east-west towards Columbia Street, known throughout the 20th century as Market Alley. Market Alley was home to the famous Green Door and Red Door Restaurants, along with other thriving Chinatown businesses. This was the first site chosen by Wong, and amongst the favourite site of the voters.
Shattered
Karin Lee, 2007
22 minutes, colour, in Toisanese and Japanese with English subtitles two-channel video installation
Shattered was exhibited at the OCCUPYING CHINATOWN studio as part of the official launch of Paul Wong’s 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN residency on April 22, 2018. The OCCUPYING CHINATOWN studio (268 Keefer Street) presented the Japantown-channel in its gallery. The SUM Gallery, located next door, presented the Chinatown-channel in its gallery.
Written, directed, and produced director Karin Lee, Shattered is a 2-channel video installation recreating the 1907 Anti-Asian Chinatown riots that took place on September 7, 1907 in Chinatown and Japantown. Lee questions the relationship between immigration, labour, and business while commenting on the current phenomenon of globalization. Shattered brings together two historic perspectives of the riots while locating it within contemporary Vancouver.
Shattered was originally shown in 2007 as a two-channel site-specific video installation in Vancouver’s Chinatown and Japantown on the night of the 100th anniversary of the Anti-Asian race riots in Vancouver (September 7, 1907).
Karin Lee is a Canadian media artist and filmmaker. Her critical voice and perspective touches on the past and the present, both local and international. An artist who constantly traverses new territory, Lee challenges film and media forms and addresses new audiences. Born and raised in Vancouver, B.C, Karin’s films are influenced by her upbringing: both her parents were activists who worked in the downtown east side, with her father running a Chinese communist bookstore at 33 East Hastings from the mid-1960s to ’80s. Her interest in Chinese Canadian identity, feminism and social justice activism informs her narrative films, experimental video, documentaries and original TV series she has written, directed and produced since 1991.
In 2001, Karin received a Gemini: The Canada Award, from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television for her groundbreaking documentary Made in China, about Chinese children adopted in Canada. In 2005 she received a BC Leo Diversity in Cultures Award.
Lee’s recent solo show at at the SUM Gallery (Canada’s first Queer Art Gallery) features My Sweet Peony Remix, Small Pleasures and Portrait of a Chinese Girl. She has just completed the TV pilot for Plan B, a drama series set in a women’s sexual health clinic. She is currently in pre-production on Girl with Big Feet (Ts’ekoo Cha Ke), a period drama.
She is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Theatre and Film Production. Karin was recognized by the City of Vancouver and awarded the Mayor’s Arts Award for Film and New Media Artist in 2014. Most recently she received a 2017 Spotlight Award for excellence in Education from the Vancouver Women in Film and Video Society.
Movement for Two Grannies: Five Variations LAIWAN, 2011
1 minute, colour, silent video
This work, curated by Paul Wong, was exhibited in the Scholar’s Study in the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden as part of the 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN summer exhibition from July 13 to September 23, 2018.
“In Movement For Two Grannies, I celebrate my elders. With tenacity, endurance, resilience, and humour they move forward passing on values and ethics, rituals and philosophies, through daily movements that ripple out beyond Vancouver. Their legacy and lineage are the foundations of a strong, vibrant cultural community in Chinatown. Dedicated to the spirit and life of my grandmother and all grandmothers for their everyday endurance and persistence despite our cultural and social neglect of elders.”
-Laiwan
Movement For Two Grannies: Five Variations is an ethereal work of cinematography featuring two Chinese grannies engaged in a moment of intimate and affectionate friendship. The scene is surreal, sensual, and serene, unlike our fast-paced urban environment. Here, LAIWAN proposes an endearing rendition of a 1-minute action movie, unhurried and cherished. It is poetic that the placement of this film is in the Scholar’s Study, as this pavilion and courtyard is located exactly at the water’s edge where False Creek’s original shoreline used to be, prior to industrialization and landfill. The grannies are depicted walking on water through time, reminding us of evolving landscapes and lost histories.
Movement For Two Grannies was one of eight works originally commissioned in 2011 as part of 10-Seconds in Time, an artist-initiated series of works curated by Paul Wong, and commissioned by the City of Vancouver. 10-Seconds in Time screened on 25 video screens over 13 Canada Line SkyTrain station platforms.
LAIWAN is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator with a wide-ranging practice based in poetics and philosophy. Born in Zimbabwe of Chinese parents, her family immigrated to Canada in 1977 to leave the war in Rhodesia. Her art training began at the Emily Carr College of Art & Design (1983), and she returned to school to receive an MFA from Simon Fraser University School for Contemporary Arts (1999). Recipient of numerous awards, including a recent Canada Council InterArts Research & Creation Award (2017) and the Vancouver Queer Media Artist Award (2008), Laiwan has served on numerous arts juries, exhibits regularly, curates projects in Canada, the US, and Zimbabwe, is published in anthologies and journals, is a cultural activist, and lives in Vancouver.
Performers’ workshop at Master Hoi Seng-Yeung’s Cantonese opera school
Performers’ workshop at Master Hoi Seng-Yeung’s Cantonese opera school
On August 1, 2018, Paul Wong curated and presented Gender Roles Playing on Stage: Pride in Chinatown, the first ever pride event in Chinatown.Hosted by Shay Dior, Mother of the House of Rice, this was a magical immersive event that took place throughout the spectacular Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. Audiences were treated to a mashup of Chinese Opera, drag, and music. For Wong, Cantonese opera was part of growing up in Chinatown, with his mother singing karaoke at home, and music from shops and rooming houses spilling out into the streets. Audiences were treated to a mashup of these gender-bending genres that celebrate the rich history of Cantonese opera as a folk art form in Chinatown and Chinese communities. Classic Chinese opera roles were originally all performed by men. More recently, when women have been permitted to perform on stage, they often play both female and male roles.
The performances in the Hall of One Hundred Rivers featured classical Cantonese opera performers Master Ieong Hoi-Seng and Cheung Yuk-Fung. They performed Fragrant Sacrifice, the grand finale of the most famous Cantonese opera The Flower Princess. It is a story of political palace intrigue, this is the Chinese Romeo and Juliet story. Master Ieong played the female part, and Cheung Yuk-Fung played the male part. This was a dramatic gender bending and colourful performance.
This was followed with performances by contemporaryAsian drag artists, Rose Butch and Maiden China. These performances were created for this event that included workshopping between the performers and producers that included visiting Master Ieong at his Cantonese opera school to learn more about the craft and history behind traditional Chinese opera. As a result, Rose Butch and Maiden China shaped their performances around the Cantonese opera genre and their own Asian heritages. Rose Butch performed a Japanese Noh Theatre-inspired piece to St. Vincent’s Prince Johnny, and Maiden China drew on Cantonese opera traditions in a performance to Björk’s Unravel. These performances were personal, emotional, and powerful for the performers and the audience.
The China Maple Hall featured DJ Ian Widgery, best known for remixing 1930s-era Shanghai jazz music with a contemporary beat, and the producer of Shanghai Lounge Divas. The Jade Water Pavilion featured a karaoke station installation with traditional Cantonese opera playing on loop. The Scholar’s Study featured Wong’s neon piece 咸水埠温哥华 / Haam Sui Fow Wun Goh Wah, and LAIWAN’s video installation, Movement For Two Grannies: Five Variations.
This was a sold-out event to a wide intergenerational and cross-cultural audience. Due to its success in 2018, we are producing an expanded Pride in Chinatown 2019. It will celebrate Queer Asian-Canadian art and artists that will tantalize all five senses. Curated by Paul Wong, this will be an interdisciplinary art event that will feature both traditional and new experimental art forms, including sonic and electronic music, immersive theatre, media art installations, lion dance and martial arts, drums, performance art, drag and non-binary encounters, poetics, opera, culinary treats and erotic refreshments.
In 2018, for a third consecutive year, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF), Reel Youth, Out On Screen, and Love Intersections collaborated for a creative matchmaking project pairing aspiring youth filmmakers and “troublemaking” seniors. This resulted in a programmed series of short documentaries, Troublemakers 3.0, profiling veteran artists whose work spans generations.
Emerging multidisciplinary artist Jackson Wai Chung Tse (謝瑋聰) was matched with Paul Wong. After a mentorship program and a series of workshops, Tse’s Paul Wong: Breaking the Silence premiered at Vancity Theatre on August 13, 2018 as part of the 30th anniversary VQFF. Produced in Chinatown at Wong’s OCCUPYING CHINATOWN studio, this short documentary profiles his life work, history, and thoughts.
A child of the fifties, Wong comes from a family, class, and racial history based on colonial exploitation and rejection, where “you weren’t allowed.” He grew up surrounded by racism and oppression, and like generations of Chinese before him “were expected to be silent… to be model citizens… to assimilate—not to be radical artists, and certainly not to be out, proud, loud, and queer. With the silence already going on within, mainstream dominant culture values, and the segregated Chinese in isolated Chinatowns, there was no room for dissent.” Paul Wong’s role as an artist has been to “break that silence.”
August 24, 2018
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden
On a beautiful sunny day in the Scholar’s Courtyard, Paul Wong spoke in depth about his year-long residency, 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN. This first artist talk elaborated on the importance behind the residency, specifically with regards to Wong’s identity as Chinese-Canadian, his connection with Chinatown, and his desire to return to the community to create new contemporary works of art in this context. The event was at capacity—attended by a cross-cultural and intergenerational audience—and concluded with a lively and informative Q&A.
A video recording of the Artist Talk is available for online viewing:
Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz, Flux Media Art Gallery
Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz, Flux Media Art Gallery
Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz, Flux Media Art Gallery
Photo credit: Kirk Schwartz, Flux Media Art Gallery
The Chinese Bone Collector
Paul Wong, in collaboration with Jeffery Chong, 2018
18:09, colour, sound, in English
video projection mapping
In Fall 2018, Paul Wong and Jeffery Chong, along with six other artists, were commissioned by Victoria’s Flux Media Art Gallery to create Invocations: Video Projections About Place and Time, a series of site-specific public video mapping projections around Victoria, BC, from September 12 to 18. Artists chose the locations, and created works focusing on the history associated with these places.
The Chinese Bone Collector took place in the Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point on September 12, 2018 at sunset. The two-part event was comprised of a ritual performed by Jeffery Chong and his family that honoured the memory of his great-grandfather, 鄭慶仰 Chong Hing Young (1874-1928), who is buried in this cemetery. This was an intimate ritual of ancestral worship at the grave where Chong and his parents burned joss sticks, joss paper, spirit money, and gave food offerings.
This was followed by an experiential video mapping projection, honouring the memory, and the spirits of other sojourners whose bones were never returned to China. The mapping took place at the altar on the shoreline facing west towards home, China. Participants were given joss items to burn at the altar to celebrate their own deceased relatives. This Chinese practice involved using all five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
The Chinese Bone Collector video incorporates re-worked footage from Wong’s previous work Chinaman’s Peak: Walking the Mountain (1992), where a reenactment of a Chinese bone collector (played by Wong) unearths and collects bones for their safe transport back to China. This footage is intertwined with contemporary 16mm footage (filmed by Chong) of the Chinese Cemetery, and archival photographs belonging to both the Wong and Chong families.
The Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point was opened in 1903 by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. This location was the only Chinese cemetery in the region, and acted as a temporary place of rest for deceased Chinese settlers before their eventual return to their ancestral home villages in China. The dead were traditionally buried for seven years to allow for complete decomposition, after which they would be disinterred, and their bones cleaned and dried for their final journey back to China. The remains of many Chinese workers from across Canada were collected by bone collectors. Many of these remains in this cemetery were never shipped back to the motherland due to interrupted shipping during the Japanese occupation of China and Hong Kong during WWII, then followed by the Communist revolution and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The Chinese Cemetery is designated a National Historic Site by the Government of Canada, and is the oldest of its kind in North America.
In November 2018, Paul Wong began a seven-week tour of India with his exhibition Private/Public/Lives. Hosted by the Shrine Empire Gallery and the Prameya Art Foundation (PRAF) in New Delhi, this exhibition introduced India to Paul Wong, and featured four of his recent works that exemplifies his multifaceted artistic process.
In November 2018, Paul Wong began a seven-week tour of India with his exhibition Private/Public/Lives. Curated by Anushka Rajendran, and hosted by the Shrine Empire Gallery and the Prameya Art Foundation (PRAF) in New Delhi, this exhibition introduced India to Paul Wong, and featured four of his recent works that exemplifies his multifaceted artistic process.
“Private/Public/Lives is an exhibition that identifies a strand of ideas that have consistently informed artist-provocateur Paul Wong’s practice. The selection of recent public art projects presented here, edited and reformatted for gallery viewing, has also been an exercise in unraveling the associations and relational dialogues that emerge when these works are viewed together in a single space.
From early, iconic works such as 60 Unit: Bruise (1976) to his ongoing project 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN, the artist has foregrounded the personal as political. The ostensibly simple, yet radically vulnerable gesture of making public the private transgressions and encounters of his body/identity has also been a process of queering histories and spaces by exposing what is conventionally marginalized and hidden in the recesses of the everyday. His practice makes obvious that what is considered ‘invisible’, is in fact a refusal to render visible what is in plain sight. This liminal, overlapping relationship between the intimate and the open is made more complex in the work Year of GIF. For the course of one year, the artist engaged in spontaneously documenting and making GIFs of what he encountered around him — photographs, shapes, objects, news stories, and self-reflexive traces of his own process of engaging with the visual medium. Speaking through a format generated on a smartphone for a public that will consume it via isolated interfaces, Year of GIF comments on the conundrum of the age of the social media — where private is public — as perhaps taking a toxic turn through an excess of the possibility of ‘anonymous’, wide, address.
Paul Wong’s interests in cutting edge, inter-disciplinary media as well as traditional media and public space, are also indicative of an interest in language, and the semantic possibilities of various forms of engagement. In Five Octave Range, the artist asserts the universal resonance and appeal of the opera, despite it being limited by access and language. As part of OCCUPYING CHINATOWN, despite not speaking the language the letters are written in, Wong worked with a translator to decipher the 700 letters written to his mother from various sources in China. Wong exhibited intimate traces of his Chinese heritage on transit shelters across Vancouver to challenge and celebrate a reality that has been pushed to the margins by historical discrimination. Such everyday records also become material in 媽媽的藥櫃 / Mother’s Cupboard, where he photographed his mother’s unconscious rewriting of signifiers of mainstream patterns of production and consumption such as jars of mayonnaise and instant coffee by relabeling and refilling them with Chinese herbs and homemade medicines. His installations of these photographs of a quotidian habit in public spaces perform reclamation of disappearing histories.”
– Anushka Rajendran
Private/Public/Livesalso included a series of artist talks, a collaborative artist and student project with an exhibition at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology (SSADT), attending the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and meeting important artists, officials, and various other figures. Both Paul Wong Projects, and specifically 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN artworks, gained recognition across Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Kochi.
From to You. As part of Wong’s participation in Srishti Interim 2018, Bengaluru, participants were asked to bring original letters not written to or from them to the workshop. The letters were the departure point for the de/construction of the letters in content, form, language, family, history and identity. The students have created a series of interdisciplinary works in text, photography, painting, poetry, video and sculpture. They have worked individually and collaboratively to present this series of gestures, narratives, illustrations and sound-bites that could suggest a storyline.
Key tour dates and events included:
November 15, 2018 – Artist Talk and Presentation of works by Paul Wong at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
November 16, 2018 – Paul Wong in conversation with the performance-based artist Amitesh Grover followed by the official opening of his exhibition at the Shrine Empire, Private/Public/Lives.
November 19 to December 12, 2018 – Paul Wong’s participation in Srishti Interim 2018, Bengaluru. This was part of the Srishti Institute of Art & Technology visiting artist program. In this project, Wong imparted to students how to transform letters into different art practices. This was concluded with an exhibition and artist talk at the Rangoli Metro Art Center.
November 24, 2018 – Artist talk by Paul Wong at 1 Shanthi road Studio Gallery, Bengaluru.
December 4, 2018– Artist talk by Paul Wong at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai.
December 18, 2018– Artist talk by Paul Wong at Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kochi.
December 27, 2018 to January 2, 2019– New Delhi Tour Wrap
Photo credit: The Public Eye mid-day.com
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Photo credit: Prameya Art Foundation
Works shown in the Private/Public/Lives exhibition at the Shrine Empire Gallery:
媽媽的藥櫃 / Mother’s Cupboard Paul Wong, 2018
24” x 36”
digital prints on photo glossy paper
(Commissioned by the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Program in partnership with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden)
This is a series of photographs of a collection of Chinese herbs and medicines, stored inside empty mayonnaise and instant coffee jars by the artist’s mother Suk Fong. The collection includes “hak dew”, a homemade compound that has no written recipe used for healing cuts and bruises. Research has helped Wong identify that its various ingredients can be found at herbal stores in Vancouver’s Chinatown even today. This project is part of Wong’s year-long residency: 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN and was featured in transit shelters across Vancouver from 22 October, 2018 to 14 January, 2019.
父字 / Father’s Words Paul Wong, 2018
24” x 36”
digital prints on photo glossy paper
(Commissioned by the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Program in partnership with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden)
This triptych shows three letters written by Suk Fong’s father in China to her. From among only 16 letters between his Grandfather and Mother, Wong creates prints of the first correspondence on 1964, August 24, then on the letter for 1971, December 29, and on Suk-Fong’s father’s final letter in 1973, June 22. During China’s Land Reformation period in the 1950s, Suk Fong’s father was declared a rightist and sent to a labour camp. The letters’ careful wording and construction can be attributed to the writer’s desire to be cautious of the scrutiny of China’s censoring of mail going overseas. This work is indicative of the interconnectedness between the personal and the political. These letters are probably as telling of a chapter in our history as official accounts on the matter. When viewed tangentially with Year of GIF, it also became an embodiment of surveillance and censorship, and the ways in which it looms over the personal.
Five Octave Range Paul Wong, 2017
non-synced loops, colour, sound,
four channel video installation
(Commissioned by Vancouver Opera for the 2017 Vancouver Opera Festival)
This was a site-specific installation created for the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Plaza from April 27 to May 14, 2017, featuring four performers with diverse octave ranges: a baritone, tenor, coloratura soprano, and a mezzo singer were asked to demonstrate their skills for the camera. The selection of performers was a deliberate choice of professional singers from diverse backgrounds, and who also identify as queer. A primarily elitist form, the opera has a strange affect that is able to transcend its own exclusivity. Paul Wong’s experiments with opera plays on the form’s affect, digitally exaggerating and manipulating its overwhelming quality for a public space, where it can be accessed by all — the seasoned opera goer, and non-traditional audiences. Art really is more democratic than the circuit it often traverses.
Year of GIF Paul Wong, 2013
5-minute loop, colour, no sound
video mapping projection
(Commissioned by Surrey Art Gallery, BC, Canada, for Urban Screen located at the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre)
The everyday is captured in a series of GIFs. Over 350 Graphic Interchange Format files are mashed together in this visual party. Drawing from an archive of hundreds of smart phone GIFs made by the artist over a year, this work commissioned for Surrey Urban Screen (SUS) functions like a mosaic of virtual flip-books simultaneously exploring themes of new media, the RGB colour model, colour bar test patterns, the formal shape of the circle, architecture, art, and portraits of family and friends. This was the largest GIF art in the world at 120’ X 35’ installed at the Surrey Urban Screen (SUS). SUS is located on the west wall of the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre and was viewable from the SkyTrain between Gateway and Surrey Central stations, and operated 30 minutes after sundown until midnight daily. By taking the format of the GIF, primarily engaged through private interfaces connected to the web, into a public space, Paul Wong questions the politics of the Internet, and the liminal public/private identities that lie at its locus. The aggregate of popular, yet intimately encountered GIFs in the work, acquires a different meaning altogether, at an expansive scale.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for supporting this tour.
We acknowledge the financial assistance of the Province of British Columbia for supporting this tour.
From October 2018 to February 2019, Paul Wong presented two series of works across the city in 45 transit shelter ad spaces for public art: one highlighting works created during his OCCUPYING CHINATOWN residency, and another promoting his exhibition 淑芳你好嘛 (Suk-Fong Nay Ho Mah) / Suk-Fong, How Are You?.
媽媽的藥櫃 / Mother’s Cupboard(October 2018 to January 2019)
The first series featured photographs of jars of Chinese herbs and medicines in random transit shelters throughout Vancouver, and at specific locations in Chinatown: Main St. & Keefer St., Hastings St. & Carrall St., and Keefer Pl. & Taylor St.
For this series, Wong organized the photographing of jars by their western brands, and presented these as large pop art sized ads, mimicking commercial food advertising. The repurposed mayonnaise and instant coffee jars contained herbs and medicines stored and labeled by Suk-Fong Wong in Chinese handwriting, and carefully dated. This selection included “tet ah dew”, a homemade compound used for healing cuts and bruises that has no written recipe.
淑芳你好嘛 (Suk-Fong Nay Ho Mah) / Suk-Fong, How Are You? (January 14 to February 3, 2019)
This second series promoted the exhibition at the Dr. Sun Yat-Set Classical Chinese Garden, 淑芳你好嘛 (Suk-Fong Nay Ho Mah) / Suk-Fong, How Are You? (January 12 to February 24, 2019). This included additional jars from 媽媽的藥櫃 / Mother’s Cupboard, 父字 / Father’s Words, and posters advertising the exhibition.
January 12 to February 24, 2019
Opening reception January 12, 1-4pm
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden
淑芳你好嘛 (Suk-Fong Nay Ho Mah) / Suk-Fong, How Are You? was the final public exhibition of the 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN. The exhibition included the 700 letters written to Suk-Fong Wong, photography, scrolls, video, neon, objects, and other ephemera. This exhibitionwas also accompanied by an offsite Transit Shelter Series, Public Art Talk, Chinese Medicine Workshop, and Chinese Medicinal Soup Making Workshop.
Audiences were invited to explore the contents of eight Letters to Suk-Fong presented in four scrolls. These works demonstrated the interconnectedness between the personal and the political. From China’s Land Reformation in the 1950s to familial politics overseas, accounts of China’s shifting cultural and political histories from the 1940s to the 2000s were told through the personal perspectives of these writers: father, sister, brother, niece. Canadian viewers became privy to private narratives that intertwined memory and history, offering a unique perspective into Chinese/Canadian life.
The exhibition also highlighted 媽媽的藥櫃 / Mother’s Cupboard, Suk-Fong’s jars of Chinese herbs and homemade medicines stored in recycled and appropriated jars of mayonnaise and instant coffee—signifiers of mainstream patterns of production and consumption—by rewriting and relabeling them for her own domestic use. Through Wong’s framework, a seemingly mundane activity inhabited the public space of the gallery and allowed for the reclamation of disappearing histories of Chinese heritage.
父字 / Father’s Words Paul Wong, 2019 30” x 102”
digital print on canvas wall scroll
Lai-Fong Paul Wong, 2019 30” x 102”
digital print on canvas wall scroll
Gin-Cheung Paul Wong, 2019 30” x 102”
digital print on canvas wall scroll
Snow’s 13-page letter, 1994 Paul Wong, 2019 16” x 181” and 12” x 136”
digital print on canvas table scroll
Artifacts
Letters to Suk-Fong Paul Wong, 2019 700 letters to Suk-Fong written from 1956 to 2016, displayed in two vitrines 23” x 23” x 12”
Four scrolls were featured in 淑芳你好嘛 (Suk-Fong Nay Ho Mah) / Suk-Fong, How Are You?. Each scroll highlights letters written to Suk-Fong. A sense of desperation is read in between the lines representing the writers’ hopes and dreams. The letters in the scrolls are in their original Chinese overlaid with English.
The Father’s Words, Lai-Fong, and Gin-Cheung scrollsare hung on the wall as a triptych. Father’s Words are three letters written over a period of 9 years from 1964 to 1973. He is Suk-Fong’s father, who was a banker, goldsmith, merchant, and landowner before the communist revolution. His land, businesses, and wealth were seized during the land reforms of the 1950s. His legs were broken in politically-motivated beatings during the years he was incarcerated in a re-education prison. In his letters, he often talks about his painful foot injuries, and the ongoing need for rare and expensive Chinese medicines. Perhaps in fear of government censorship, his internationally-destined letters were carefully worded, often emphasizing the much simpler life that now existed in the new People’s Republic of China. This scroll features a photograph of Mr. Chen in a winter coat from approximately the 1970s.
The Lai-Fong scroll features two letters from Suk-Fong’s youngest sister in 1973.The letters are addressed to Susan Wong, which is Suk-Fong’s anglo-name. The photograph is of Lai-Fong, and one of her three sons. The first is a mournful letter reporting their father’s death. The second letter reports on the logistics and expenses of the funeral procedures, and praises Suk-Fong for her financial support from overseas. These letters emphasize the reality of hardship endured by Suk-Fong’s immediate family in China.
The Gin-Cheung scroll features two letters from Suk-Fong’s brother. In a letter from 1980, Gin-Cheung, hopeful of immigrating from China to Canada, reports on the lifting of government restrictions, and refers to a previous letter written 22 years earlier in 1958, where he was punished, ridiculed, labeled a rightist, and sent to labour reform camps. This explains the true meaning behind his desperate plea for support back then. The photograph of Gin-Cheung is from the 1960s.
Snow’s 13-page letter, 1994 was presented on a Chinese scholar’s desk as a table scroll. In this densely written 13-page letter, Suk-Fong’s niece Snow recounts her life story of unfortunate events, wasted opportunities, and abuse from her incestuous and murderous husband. Despite this, she overcame these hardships and pursued a career in medicine. This scroll features various photographs of Snow and family members.
Mother’s Cupboard – Miracle Whip Jar Paul Wong, 2019 58” x 74”
digital print on vinyl
Mother’s Cupboard – Aylmer Jar Paul Wong, 2019 58” x 74”
digital print on vinyl
Mother’s Cupboard – Nalley Jar side Paul Wong, 2019 58” x 74”
digital print on vinyl
Mother’s Cupboard – Red Lid Jars Paul Wong, 2019 58” x 74”
digital print on vinyl
Video
Mother’s Cupboard Paul Wong, 2019
10 minutes 23 seconds, colour, sound, in Toisan with English and Chinese subtitles video
Artifacts
Mother’s Cupboard Paul Wong, 2019 Suk-Fong’s jars displayed in vitrine 87” x 18” x 35”
Mother’s Cupboard was presented in three variations as part of the exhibition 淑芳你好嘛 (Suk-Fong Nay Ho Mah) / Suk-Fong, How Are You?. The exhibition was the final instalment of Paul Wong’s year-long 身在唐人街 / OCCUPYING CHINATOWN residency and took place in the Garden’s Hall of One Hundred Rivers. Upon entering the exhibition space, visitors immediately noticed four larger-than-life prints of Mother’s Cupboard. These prints featured Suk-Fong’s treasured jars of elixirs and ingredients.
Exhibited in a vitrine were four dozen jars from Suk-Fong’s cupboards. Viewers were able to appreciate Suk-Fong’s meticulous organization, labelling, and categorization of her herbs and elixirs contained in recycled western -brand jars, ie. Nabob Coffee, Classico, Miracle Whip, and Taster’s Choice jars.
The exhibition also included the Mother’s Cupboard video. Recorded in 2012 in her kitchen, Suk-Fong takes her son through her collection of Chinese medicines, herbs, and ingredients. She speaks in her first language, Toisanese, and describes what her homemade compounds are used for. This includes “loik doy dew,” a deer-antler, alcohol-based elixir that she adds to soups. Most of her ingredients can be readily found in Chinese herbal stores.
