High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese

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Tomoyo Ihaya, "Richmond Map," 2014

watercolour and ink

Launch of Exhibition

Saturday, April 8 | 7:30−9pm

Celebrate the opening of our spring exhibitions High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese and Jim Adams: The Irretrievable Moment.

Panel Discussion with High Muck a Muck Artists

Saturday, June 10 | 2:30–4pm

High Muck a Muck coordinator, writer, and artist Nicola Harwood, along with poet Fred Wah and composer Jin Zhang, will be joined by artist and researcher Cora Li-Leger and Surrey Art Gallery curator Jordan Strom to discuss history, identity, migration, and narrative in new forms of digital practice.

Family Sunday Summer Art Party

Sunday, July 15 | Noon–4pm

Drop in to create, explore, and enjoy art with friends and family! Engage in activities that respond to the exhibitions, including hands-on artmaking workshops in a range of mediums, an art explorer game in the Gallery, and an interactive performance in the Studio Theatre.

Explore Chinese immigration to BC through interactive lottery game

High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese

April 8−August 26 | Opening Reception: April 8, 7:30−9pm

Panel Discussion with Artists: June 10, 2:30−4pm

Play the Chinese lottery and see what life was like as a Chinese immigrant to British Columbia. The artist collective High Muck a Muck bring west coast Chinese history into the present through a digital and interactive exhibit on display in the Surrey Art Gallery’s TechLab from April 8 to August 26. High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese explores historical and contemporary tensions surrounding Chinese immigration to British Columbia. The exhibition is part of the explorASIAN festival.

Visitors are invited to participate in the gamble of immigration by filling in a Chinese lottery card called Pak Ah Pu and inserting it into a machine that will read your card and offer you a “fortune” on the screen behind. You’ll be taken to Chinatown in Nelson, Victoria, Vancouver, or Richmond where you’ll encounter evocative poems by Fred Wah, former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, watercolour paintings of people and landscapes by Tomoyo Ihaya, music by Jin Zhang, videos and performances by Bessie Wapp and Thomas Loh, and oral histories by a number of people that give you a snapshot of Chinese life then and now. The project was curated by artist and writer Nicola Harwood who teaches Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Curator Nicola Harwood conceived this project in Nelson, BC as a way to commemorate the Chinese community history there that was “completely invisible.” The project grew to include other places in BC to make it more representative of Chinese immigration. Harwood says the project approaches immigration as “a journey towards a new identity” fraught with tensions: between the old way and the new way, between races, cultures, neighbourhoods, and also between different groups of Chinese immigrants such as the old labourers struggling to save money to bring their families to Canada and the new wave of immigrants from Hong Kong that come with cash and invest in property.

High Muck a Muck Collective is made up of Nicola Harwood, Fred Wah, composer Jin Zhang; and artists/performers Bessie Wapp and Thomas Loh. Significant artistic contributions also came from Nelson performer Hiromoto Ida, visual artist Tomoyo Ihaya, and electronic artist Phillip Djwa. Many community members also contributed oral histories and stories, including Cameron Mah and Lawrence Mar, both of Nelson.

High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese is also an interactive website where all the materials of the exhibition can be experienced online at highmuckamuck.ca. The project was awarded the New Media Writing Prize in 2015.