"Chinese Restaurants and the Head Tax Issu e in Canadian Art"
The exhibition “REDRESS EXPRESS: Chinese Restauran ts and the Head Tax Issue in Canadian Art” features recent photography\, vi deo and installations by five Chinese-Canadian artists: Gu Xiong (Vancouver )\, Shelly Low (Montreal)\, Ho Tam (Victoria\, BC)\, Karen Tam (Montreal)\, and Kira Wu (Vancouver). It is held in conjunction with the two-day sympos ium “REDRESS EXPRESS: Current Directions in Asian Canadian Art and Culture” which brings together over twenty scholars\, community activists\, cultura l organizers\, and artists from many disciplines to consider current and fu ture directions in Asian Canadian art and culture. The REDRESSEXPRESS proje ct is curated by Alice Ming Wai Jim and accompanied by a colour catalogue w ith additional graphic illustrations by Joanne Hui (Montreal).
As a w hole\, the REDRESS EXPRESS project is an attempt to examine the current pol itics of representation\, redress and recognition in Canada as they relate to art\, activism\, identity and geography. The call for redress has long b een the bookends for Asian Canadian critiques of Canada’s racist past. The recent victory of the redress campaign for surviving Chinese head tax payer s and their spouses and its inevitable effects on the current politics of r eparation and representation in this country\, however\, presents another c hallenge: to ensure an ongoing\, rigorous treatment these issues demand in political\, cultural and educational sectors. With the host of 2007 anniver saries of historical dates significant to Canadians and Asian Canadian comm unities in particular celebrated this year\, this provision of critical tex ts in contemporary discourse and practice and the broadening of understandi ng to address cross-cultural perspectives and realities remains imperative.
Providing the starting point of this project\, the exhibition brings together recent artworks that explore the Chinese restaurant as an iconic institution and bring forward critical discourses in relation to the head t ax redress and identity politics in general. The Chinese restaurant install ation by Karen Tam exposes the cultural underpinnings and ethnic stereotype s that define family-owned Chinese restaurants in Canada as well as the evo lution of Chinese Canadian cuisine. Kira Wu’s photographic series of the ex teriors of Chinese-Canadian restaurants in the neighbourhood initiate a rev iew of signage and cultural arbitrage. Shelly Low’s self-portraits and Rice -Krispies squares sculpture intimates a self-conscious projection and repre sentation of the consumable ethnic or exotic 'other'. The Yellow Pages (199 4) by Ho Tam provides a video primer from A to Z of past and present Asian experience within North America. Gu Xiong’s series of hanging banner portra its of present-day and historical figures important to the development of C hinese Canadian communities gives face to the historical moments of redress .
Exhibition Patron\; Ms. Anndraya T. Luui.
Centre A gratefully
acknowledges the generous support of its patrons\, sponsors\, members\, par
tners\, private foundations\, as well as government funding agencies\, inc
luding the Canada Council for the Arts\, the British Columbia Arts Council\
, and the City of Vancouver through the Office of Cultural Affairs.
I
n conjunction with:
2007 Anniversaries of Change\, http://www.anniversaries07.ca
Powell Street
Festival\, August 4-5\, 2007\,
http://www.powellstfestival..com
explorASIAN 2007\, http://www.explorasian.org