Gu Xiong’s art practice is an absolute global adventure if we look at his experiences as a whole. The key word in his adventure is migration. Forty years ago, the abruptly resumed National College Entrance Examination allows Gu Xiong –back then a sent-down youth in the countryside of Southwestern China – to become a university[…]
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[…]
It has been 30 years since my immigration to Vancouver in Canada, a city by the Fraser River. Tomorrow, I will take a flight back to my hometown Chongqing, for my exhibition “Gu Xiong: Migrations.” This exhibition is about how I build up my cultural identity through my experience of migrations. Airport is the place[…]