Through the Riptide As A Canoe
Group Exhibition
He Xiangning Art Museum
December 28, 2023 – March 24. 2024
If a small boat forces a crossing, it’ll be back someday.” This lyric is from the 1980 Cantonese TV series Fatherland theme song, telling a tale of ordinary people living along the Guangdong coast in the early 20th century with aspirations to make their dreams come true one day in the United States, while also depicting experiences of Chinese laborers in America back then.
The theme Through the Riptide as a Canoe for this Global Overseas Chinese Artists Exhibition pays homage not only to early Chinese immigrants to the United States, but also to Chinese diaspora living in the Americas today. As a minority group, overseas Chinese face inevitable exclusion from mainstream culture, while personally experiencing impacts of cultural impasse. These experiences occur in everyday life as well as on spiritual and cultural levels. In exploring and expressing various ‘similarities and differences’ between themselves and an external world, some artists adopt a grand narrative approach, while others focus on perspectives closer to everyday life. Through their artistic praxis, overseas Chinese artists visualize feelings and experience, allowing audiences to glimpse into their hearts and minds. The primary intention of this Global Overseas Chinese Artists Exhibition is to break away from Eurocentric art history narratives to arrive at a more humane perspective.
The Global Overseas Chinese Artists Exhibition is now in its sixth iteration, having previously sampled regions of Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Over a decade has lapsed, however, since our first and second editions, when we surveyed overseas Chinese in the Americas. It’s now worth looking again into this region, for a renewed understanding and appreciation of overseas Chinese artists. This exhibition features 17 artists who have lived extensively in China, the United States, Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, and Peru. Through their creative work and storytelling, audiences are invited to explore the art and lives of Chinese artists rich in cultural experience of the Americas.
He Xiangning Art Museum
According to plan, this iteration of the Global Overseas Chinese Artists Exhibition focuses on the Americas, utilizing art as a medium to record, present, and disseminate stories of ethnic Chinese in the Americas. With the support of overseas embassies and consulates, local ethnic Chinese communities, as well as artists, we were able to conduct a preliminary survey of overseas Chinese artistic ecologies in the Americas as preparation for our first and second iterations of the Global Overseas Chinese Artists Exhibition. Our most significant observation consisted in diversity, not merely of surface forms and appearances, but also in strength emanating from artistic praxes in lieu of self-development within social and professional roles. In recent years, Guangdong institutions have made influential contributions to this cultural research, using analysis of overseas Chinese as a touchstone in gauging how Chinese art communities respond effectively to shifts in global art history writing.
For overseas Chinese artists scattered among ‘the other,’ artistic connections are not as clear or close as they appear to Chinese artists working within China. We should be weary speaking too generally here. Our focus remains, therefore, upon case studies. The lives of circumstances of overseas Chinese artists in the Americas differ significantly from what we find to be true in Southeast Asia. We find artists engaged in art practices based on ‘Three Worlds’ theory, creators who intervene on local landscapes through habitual ‘sketch’ painting, and many who experimentally transform Chinese visual experiences in the context of a ‘New World.’ It’s noteworthy that artists motivated by ‘cultural identity’ extend beyond first generation immigrants. Indeed, we find second and third-generation overseas Chinese who begin with personal experience, blending knowledge of cultural geography, material culture, and language archaeology with memories and translation, focusing on details by which to separate the ‘self’ and ‘other’ from the outmoded precipitate consisting in zero-sum narratives of ‘self’ and ‘other.’ There are, indeed, art historians and critics who contribute to mutual understanding between China and the rid through translation, research, and curation. We have included this important body of work in our exhibition. We believe that, in the face of genuine Chinese literary value, differences in formal language can be overlooked.
The main title of the exhibition, Through the Riptide as a Canoe comes from the 1980 Cantonese TV series Fatherland theme song which goes, “If a small boat forces a crossing, it’ll be back someday.” For overseas Chinese who have lived abroad for some time, art may prove an essential channel for their spiritual ‘return home.’
Wang Xiaosong, Curator
Mother’s Cupboard
Paul Wong, 2019
24″ x 36″ ink jet, colour prints
Limited edition of 5
Series of 10 images
Mother’s Cupboard was presented in Quivering Scene as part of the Through the Riptide As A Canoe exhibition, Dec 28, 2023 to Mar 24, 2024, in He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China. This work comprises 10 photos of repurposed jars owned by Chinese-Canadian elder Suk-Fong and a video recorded in her kitchen. Viewers can observe the meticulous labeling of the herbs and elixirs contained within the recycled Western jars. Wong explains that the artwork signifies mainstream patterns of production and consumption by rewriting and relabeling them for her domestic use.
父字 / FATHER’S WORDS
父字 / Father’s Words, August 24, 1964
Paul Wong, 2019
50.5″ x 67.5″
digital print on bamboo paper, edition of 2
父字 / Father’s Words, December 29, 1971
Paul Wong, 2019
50.5″ x 67.5″
digital print on bamboo paper, edition of 2
父字 / Father’s Words, June 22, 1973
Paul Wong, 2019
50.5″ x 67.5″
digital print on bamboo paper, edition of 2
Father’s Words are three letters written over a period of 9 years from 1964 to 1973. He is Suk-Fong’s father, who was a banker, goldsmith, merchant, and landowner before the communist revolution. His land, businesses, and wealth were seized during the land reforms of the 1950s. His legs were broken in politically-motivated beatings during the years he was incarcerated in a re-education prison. In his letters, he often talks about his painful foot injuries, and the ongoing need for rare and expensive Chinese medicines. Perhaps in fear of government censorship, his internationally-destined letters were carefully worded, often emphasizing the much simpler life that now existed in the new People’s Republic of China.
Each letter is presented on its own, as a triptych. Variations on a photograph of Suk-Fong’s father disappears with each proceeding letter.