Gu Xiong, Facing Home – Harling Point, 2020, HD video projection, 5:24 min. (camera, Yu Gu and Tom Campbell; editor, Tom Campbell)
AHVA Visual Art Professor Gu Xiong’s solo exhibition at Centre A, The Remains of a Journey, is currently on until February 13, 2021.
The Remains of a Journey brings visibility to historic sites that have gradually faded away from official narratives as their physical remnants have disappeared from the landscape. The exhibition sparks an uncanny parallel to the anti-Chinese sentiment prevailing during the current coronavirus pandemic.
Excerpt from Galleries West Stories:
Chinese immigrants first began settling Vancouver’s Chinatown, a vibrant neighbourhood filled with family-run businesses, in the late 1800s. But the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced foot traffic and forced many local shops to shutter. The silence that enshrouds the normally bustling Sun Wah Centre, a four-storey community hub that houses two galleries hosting an exhibition by Vancouver artist Gu Xiong, seems eerily appropriate to his subject matter – abandoned heritage sites on the West Coast.
Xiong’s show, The Remains of a Journey, renders visible forgotten narratives about the places once occupied by Chinese immigrants, who often laboured in British Columbia’s gold and coal mines. The show, at Centre A, an international centre for contemporary Asian art, and Canton-Sardine, opened by artists originally from Canton, reanimates those stories and underlines how our memories of mass migrations inform our views on globalization.
Read more about the exhibition in here.
