> Second-gen. Chinese-Canadian.
> Enthusiast of History + Art + Heritage
> Avid Gardener + Cook / Baker
> Hobbyist Chinese Lion Dancer
Vancouver Chinatown community member
Intern Architect (AIBC) / Artist /
Researcher / Community Archivist
Biography:
> Chau Luen Kon Sol Society of Vancouver - CLAC Archives (昭倫文物組): @chauluenyvr
> Shon Yee Athletics - Lion Dance Troupe
(崇義體育會舞獅團): @shonyeeathletics
Community-based Projects:
Below is a selection of personal works done between 2011-2019 (not ordered chronologically).
For additional work, please see:
Printmaking + Painting.
Selected Personal Works:
Since the 19th century immigrants of Chinese descent have established businesses in “Chinatown” communities across Canada. While historically serving as sites of safety for a minority faced with racism and exclusion, they have since the 20th century witnessed unprecedented socio-economic urban decay. In 2016, Canada held North America’s second Chinatown Conference to critically reexamine current redevelopment proposals in these sites where local cultural legacies have become endangered due to aims for economic profitability and urban density.
This project reimagines an “iconic” yet contemporary visual identity for Toronto’s Chinatown East by reinterpreting architecture form the Lingnan region – one unifying point of reference behind Canada’s early Chinatown pioneers. In contrast to conventional development, the proposal combines Lingnan courtyard typologies together with a multi-storey, intergenerational programming necessary for the future of the local community.
To commemorate Toronto’s early Chinese-Canadians a large four-storey memorial wall is proposed, to have dedications inscribed onto it. It would be in its orientation be in direct dialogue and conversation with East Chinatown’s existing Paifang Chinese gateway in the neighbourhood.
East Chinatown:
Gateway Into the Community
Location:
East Chinatown, Toronto, ON.
2016-2017
Master of Archicture Thesis.
Inter-Generational Chinatown Community Hub (Proposal).
The typology of the storefront business is analyzed in its programming and function in the everyday lives of our communities - in this instance Toronto’s diverse neighborhoods. Many examples visited and shown here were documented from first-hand interviews and site measurements by hand.
Each case study revealed the resilience and resourcefulness of the banal storefront - a space that was and remains cherished by each respective community. Behind the façade of the everyday, these spaces were found to be ever-changing in function, ad-hoc multi-purposed and fluidly collaborative in use.
Toronto Storefront Communities
Location:
Greater Toronto Area, ON.
2014-2016, 2019.
Master of Architecture Thesis Research
+ Ongoing Self-Study.
Research on small-scale, commercial + ad-hoc community hubs
Between the recent decline and decay of Vancouver’s Historic Chinatown and the newly growing demographics of Chinese in the city of Richmond, Double Exposure questions what is to become of everything caught in-between?
After the 1990s wave of new Asian awareness between the work of Paul Wong and the local art scene to the art market in China, there remains for those living in Canada a constant discrepancy in identity. Particularly for a new generation of Chinese (native and non-native), past is often overlooked favoring for the fashionably new.
Playing upon the notion of the photographic exposure, what becomes caught is the figure amongst the Chinatown cityscape. Situated originally as a performance, the longing for a past is one marked between what is genuine and what is purely kitsch.
Double Exposure attempts to foster discussion about the complications associated to sites, such as Chinatown, where dialogue with culture, heritage and its people remain vitally important.
Press:
https://thecanadaline.com/art-program/double-exposure/
Double Exposure
Location:
Marine Drive Canada Line Station,
Vancouver, B.C. 2010-2015.
Part of Translink’s Canada Line Public Art Program.
Material:
Diptych Photograph Installation.
Joss paper or "ghost money," are sheets of paper that are burned in traditional Chinese deity or ancestor worship ceremonies. The goal of ancestor worship is to ensure the ancestor's continual
well-being in the afterlife and their positive disposition towards the living. One of the common folded forms is after that of the Chinese gold ingot or scyee / jin yuan bao, a type currency that China used until the 20th century.
Gold Mountain attempts to honour while simulatenously digest the struggles of the early Chinese, often led to work on completing the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) - the very material the “ghost money” mound is made of.
All the while during the performance piece an audio recording of a CPR tourism advertisement plays in the background.
In dedication to all those who came before and to those to come…
Gold Mountain
Location:
Identiverse
(Group Exhibition)
Part of Vancouver Asian Heritage Month.
UBC Asian Centre, 2012
Solo public art performance.
UBC Vancouver Campus, 2011.
Material:
Acetate Sheets, Rocky Mountains Poster, Flannel Shirt.
Audio Recording - Canadian Pacific written by George Hamilton IV.
Reliquum, “the remaining” or “the things yet to be,” is a 48 foot long, public exhibition of single photographs collected from publishers, editors, authors, and literary individuals from across Canada’s literary and publishing communities.
The basis behind each individual’s selected single photograph is that it would have helped and inspired that particular individual to conduct their everyday work as local “producers” or “agents” of literary culture.
The public will have the rare opportunity to view on display and read in provided artist catalogues the unseen thoughts and processes behind the minds (and single photographs) chosen by these individuals.
The collection of submitted photographs is in itself a contemplation on the unseen - a contemplation on the unwritten word.
Reliquum
Location:
Vancouver Public Library - Central Library Square,
Vancouver, B.C., 2012.
2012 The Word On The Street Literary Festival
Material:
Coroplast Board, 8.5”x 11” printed
photographs.
And Our Mothers Will Be Mothers is a small-scale tactile textiles piece consisting of nine lines of a poem sewn onto nine cloth bands all knotted together forming one long continuous chain.
The art installation commemorates those before us, particularly our matriarchs (ie: mothers and grandmothers), whom would use make-shift wood beams, house moldings, broken poles, found lumber, sewn together remnant cloth strips and more to nurture and support their backyard gardens across Metro Vancouver, particularly in East Vancouver.
A single laminated sheet is provided featuring a portrait of the artist’s grandmother, their grandmother’s backyard garden and a self-portrait photograph taken at age 10 with their grandmother’s harvested Chinese fuzzy melons (模瓜).
Location:
UBC Robson Square,
Vancouver, B.C. 2011.
Housed in Michael Tora Speier’s “Hapa Big Board" (III),
Part of the 2011 Hapa-Palooza Festival.
Material:
Sewn Textiles, Laminated Sheet.
And our mothers will be mothers,
Pounding sun-beat sweat on clothes by the river.
Carrying buckets two miles long across farmland,
Before the long trek to school.
Sewing, mending, cooking, tying,
Her lotus leaf rice and deep-fried sesame balls.
Today it is her garden rather,
Where bean sprouts and melon,
Are set in place with knots in cloth.
And Our Mothers Will Be Mothers
As a museum assistant to the Japanese Canadian National Museum, (known today as the Nikkei National Museum), I was tasked to design a poster and custom kamizumo or “paper sumo toys” for a Family Games Day event called: “Jan-Ken-Pon” or “Rock-Paper-Scissors.”
For the kamizumo toys the designs were based off of one being like a traditional sumo wrestler and the other based off of the Red-Crowned Crane - the main logo icon of the Museum’s head foundation: The Nikkei Place Foundation.
For the poster design, inspiration was drawn from hand-sketching and reviewing a number of traditional Japanese toys played historically drawings from both existing objects in the museum’s own collection and from sources online. A gust of wind or crashing waves (ie: thinking about traditional seigaiha waves) was used as the overarching main image tying the entire poster together.
Kamizumo (紙相撲), or “paper sumo” is one traditional Japanese toy, consisting of a sumo battle royale between two paper “sumo” puppets. When the one puppet has been knocked out of the ring, the other puppet left standing becomes the victor.
