I built the railway. I opened a laundry and a restaurant. I built a church and a school. I raised a family. I built Chinatown. I paid the head tax. I couldn’t vote. I fought in the Second World War. I struggled. This is my home. Am I no longer excluded? I work hard and[…]
She reminded me to think in dreams. Somewhere there is a sketchbook, a collection of drawings of landscapes and lakes, maybe icebergs, ragged pine trees, undulations of granite, expanses of wilderness. Snow, maybe a sleigh, possibly a church in a rural village, the images are small but detailed, exquisitely executed in pencil and ink on[…]
An excerpt from Gu Xiong — The River, the catalog from an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria: Gu Xiong has installed The River, his meditation on modern migrancy and displacement, twice.[1] On both occasions, the piece occupied an entire room. At Artspeak Gallery, in Vancouver, the installation comprised three components: a trail of bleached-white socks winding[…]
This article was first printed in the Winter 2012 issue of The Capilano Review, “ecologies.” In their preface to Cultures of Globalization, Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi write, “Globalization falls outside the established academic disciplines, as a sign of the emergence of a new kind of social phenomenon” that “seems to concern politics and economics in immediate ways,[…]
This essay is an excerpt from the catalog for Waterscapes, an exhibition at the Richmond Art Gallery. Mainstream narratives commonly portray the experience of migration and settlement as a profound break from the past, compelling one to either adopt unfamiliar values and customs or fiercely protect an ethnic culture under siege. The everyday lives and sensibilities of immigrants,[…]
This essay is an excerpt from the catalog for Waterscapes, an exhibition at the Richmond Art Gallery written by Chris Lee. In recent years, multimedia artist Gu Xiong has been exploring how rivers shape the economic, cultural, and imaginary lives of migrants in China and Canada. This work, writes April Liu, offers “a deep meditation on constant mobility[…]
Ten years ago you left China and came to North America. Did you have any expectations of what your new home might be like? When I lived in China, I always dreamed romantically about ‘Western’ culture and thought that there was a limitless amount of freedom in North America. I wanted to live there and[…]
When the cannons of colonialism blasted through the iron ports of China, the history of Chinese immigration to North America began. Thousands of Chinese crossed the Pacific Ocean to come to Canada. They came in search of Gold Mountain, but instead, they were hired to work on the transcontinental railway through the Rocky Mountains. They[…]
We left the hotel in the early morning, walked through the outdoor market, bought fruit, and headed up the mountain. We took the road but soon abandoned this route to follow a narrow dirt path that skirted a few houses. Through thick drizzle, beneath a heavy cold gray sky hovering between rain and fog, we[…]