限华 | CHINESE ONLY TELEVISION BUMPERS

限华/ CHINESE ONLY TELEVISION BUMPERS

限华 Chinese Only Television Bumpers

Paul Wong, 2019

Series of six 10-seconds television bumpers

1. Planet
2. Sunset
3. B/W
4. Neon
5. Traditional and Simplified
6. Countdown

The Chinese Only Television Bumpers references signs used during a time when local, white-only establishments blatantly refused and restricted Chinese people.

The Chinese Only characters, however, can also be interpreted as “Chinese Exclusion” as the characters 限and 华 were often used in Canada’s historical exclusion of Chinese people in public spaces from the 1800’s to the mid-20th Century.

These video logos have been created for the grunt gallery Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen and intended to be presented between other artists videos. Five of the logos are in Chinese, one is in English.

“Through the displacement, or reclamation of historic signs Wong shifts the notion of place to include the politics of race. These 10-second “CHINESE ONLY Television Bumpers” were designed as inserts into the PLACE programming in order to disrupt the traditional space of capitalism and white supremacy ideology. “