Whose Chinatown?

Peeling back complex histories through art and archives.

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Canada's Chinatowns have always been vibrant locales for both residents and visitors. But as with other cultural pockets, they’re in flux.

This evolution, as seen through the eyes of those who live there, is the focus of a historical overview, Whose Chinatown?, on view until May 1 at Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver. 

The exhibition is curated by Montreal artist Karen Tam, known for challenging perceptions of Chinese culture by building installations – restaurants, opium dens, karaoke lounges and curio shops – from materials she borrows, buys and scrounges in the community.

For this project, she collected photographs, drawings, videos and memorabilia from families and institutions. They are arranged in three categories – enterprise, living spaces and the Chinese societies that help immigrants adapt to new circumstances.

The exhibition is dominated by Linda Zhang’s three-metre-tall skeletal rendition of Toronto’s East Chinatown Gate, a piece called Future Heritage(s) of ChinaTOwn.

“I wanted to think about the ways we collect and also whose history gets to be collected and told,” says Tam.

Photographs figure prominently. While many offer a pleasant take on community life, others, such as Shanghai Alley After the Chinatown Riots, depict racism and histories of exclusion. Marik Boudreau’s series, Rue de Lagauchetière, shows parts of Montreal’s Chinatown that were demolished for a federal building around 1976.

But the artistic record also includes examples of community pushback. 

Love Letters to the Harbin Gate by the collective aiya 哎呀 laments the dismantling of an Edmonton landmark to make way for light rail transit, while Chinese Language Development Sign records the Toronto community’s concerns in 2019 about being displaced. Vancouver artist Paul Wong’s 2018 neon sculpture, Chinese Only, is a pointed dig at establishments that once barred non-white patrons.

“It’s works like these that I find really important,” says Tam. “They’re advocating for the residents and, in a way, fighting for the survival of these communities.”

Tam has also compiled a wealth of material related to the arts and letters that demonstrate Chinatown's unique voice.

“I was thinking who were some of the early Chinese Canadian artists?" she says. "Who gets to be included in early Canadian art history?”  

Thus, we see a photograph of student Yitkon Ho and the first graduating class of the fledgling Vancouver School of Art in 1929. Serigraphs from master printmaker Anna Wong, born and raised in Vancouver's Chinatown, hang on a nearby wall, while pages from Vancouver illustrator Marlene Yuen’s Jumbo’s Cabin sit in a nearby vitrine. Opera, as represented in the photograph, Ching Won Musical Society, was another cultural feature of Canada’s mid-century Chinatowns. 

The exhibition culminates with a 2010 video conversation between Montreal artist Mary Sui Yee Wong and her father, a community elder and activist. The discussion centres on intergenerational identity.

“It’s a piece that looks at the fear of not belonging or being forgotten,” says Tam. 

While the exhibition speaks of the Chinese experience in Canada – exclusion and inclusion, individuals and community – the underlying message of shared humanity is universal. ■  

Whose Chinatown? at Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver from Jan. 29 to May 1, 2021.

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Griffin Art Projects

1174 Welch Street, North Vancouver, British Columbia V7P 1B2

604-985-0136

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