Henry Tsang: Hastings Park

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Henry Tsang, "Hastings Park: Building A - Livestock Building North, East Entrance," 2021

pigment ink on metallic paper, 122 cm x 91 cm. Photo by artist.

Henry Tsang: Hastings Park

This multimedia installation presents photographs and projections of four buildings at Hastings Park in Vancouver, where, in 1942, roughly 8000 Japanese Canadians were marshalled and detained prior to being sent to internment and labour camps in the BC interior, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. Among the four buildings is the Livestock Building—a place associated nowadays with the Pacific National Exhibition’s popular pig races and petting zoo.

Tsang used a thermal imaging camera to create his images based in part on the compositions and staging of Leonard Frank’s documentary photographs of the Japanese Canadian internment in this temporary incarceration site. A thermal imaging camera is typically used in the construction industry to display differences in temperature by detecting light rays that are invisible to the human eye. Such photographs can reveal leaks or cracks in a building. 

Along with Cindy Mochizuki: Autumn Strawberry, Henry Tsang: Hastings Park uses camera and projection technologies in unexpected ways to illuminate forgotten images and histories.

Join Henry Tsang and Cindy Mochizuki for a virtual conversation about their exhibits on Saturday, July 17 at 7pm via Facebook Live and YouTube.

About the Artist

Henry Tsang is an artist and occasional curator based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. His projects explore the spatial politics of history, language, community, food, and cultural translation in relationship to place. These take the form of gallery exhibitions, pop-up street food offerings, 360 video walking tours, curated dinners, ephemeral and permanent public art, employing video, photography, language, interactive media, food, and convivial events. Projects include 360 Riot Walk, a 360 video walking tour of the 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver, Canada, and Welcome to the Land of Light, a public artwork along Vancouver's seawall that underscores the 19th century trade language Chinook Jargon and the English that replaced it. Henry teaches at Emily Carr University of Art & Design.