Occupying Chinatown
鹹水埠溫哥華/咸水埠温哥华/Haam Sui Fow Wun Goh Wah
July 13 to September 23, 2018
OCCUPYING CHINATOWN is Paul Wong’s year-long artist residency at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden that launched in Spring 2018. Wong will be creating a series of multidisciplinary artworks based on 700 letters in Chinese sent by 90 writers to his mother Suk-Fong Wong.
This residency will evoke memories and loss for the generations of Chinese-Canadians who built a community within a segregated Chinatown. OCCUPYING CHINATOWN throughout the seasons will feature collaborative contemporary works of art with various artists, and will engage visitors and community with diverse programming, workshops, performances, events, and a book.
The first new site-specific work to be created as part of this residency is 鹹水埠溫哥華/咸水埠温哥华/Haam Sui Fow Wun Goh Wah (Saltwater City-Vancouver). These two text pieces acknowledge Chinatown’s Toisanese settlers, and are presented at the Garden: one “wooden” and the other neon.
In addition, there is an exhibition of LAIWAN’s film Movement for Two Grannies: Five Variations in the Scholar’s Study. This piece features two Chinese grannies engaged in a moment of intimate and affectionate friendship. Paul Wong has been creating daring work for over 40 years, pushing the boundaries of conventional cultural stereotypes and art. He has produced large-scale interdisciplinary artworks in unexpected public spaces since the 1970s. His work subverts stereotypes in form and content. Many works are bilingual and trilingual, meshing English, Cantonese and Mandarin codes. Works include: Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shade (Cantonese and English) (1988); Chinaman’s Peak: Walking the Mountain (1992); Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World (1996); Widows 97 (1997), Wah-Q: The Overseas Chinese (1998) and Refugee Class of 2000 (2000). www.paulwongprojects.com
OCCUPYING CHINATOWN is a public art project commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program in partnership with the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. With support from The Audain Foundation.