"Whose Chinatown?" Exhibition 3 Favorite 

Whose Chinatown? Examining Chinatown Gazes in Art, Archives, and Collections, brings together an art history of Chinatowns and their communities by historical and contemporary Canadian artists such Emily Carr, Unity Bainbridge, Yucho Chow, Fred Herzog, Paul Wong, Mary Sui Yee Wong, Morris Lum, and aiya哎呀, among others. Drawing from private collections in Vancouver and across Canada, such as the Beatrice and Raymond Jai Collection, and the Chung Collection which holds more than 25000 rare items related to Chinese Canadian history assembled over 60 years and is now housed at UBC, the show will also be augmented with public archives and collections. Complementing the artworks, artefacts, and archival materials is a robust public programming. This exhibition aims to question how narratives are constructed around the idea of Chinatown and the colonial notions that underwrite some of these relations.

The show has been building in the curator, Karen Tam’s mind for several years. A throughline of her work has been the juxtaposition of western fascination with the East and anti-Chinese racism—something that goes back to the days of the Silk Road and that’s just as prevalent today, with the pandemic giving rise to discrimination against Chinese people. Whose Chinatown? builds on that theme through Tam’s interest in the lack of Chinese representation in Canadian art history.

“When I was invited by Griffin Art Projects to participate in a curatorial residency,” Tam says, “I think all these things were in my head, along with the pandemic and the related rise in anti-Asian attacks. It all came together for me and got me thinking about whose Chinatown?—a discussion of how Chinatowns across Canada have been represented, how are they discussed, and dangers that they face over decades gentrification and development….As I was doing my research, I was trying to find images of Chinatowns made by Chinese artists in historical archives and collections, and really realized there should be more work done to get this work out.”