CCM launches new exhibition Reshaping Collections: Where History Meets Art
Vancouver, BC (September 4, 2024) – The Chinese Canadian Museum is launching a brand new exhibition inside the Poy Family Gallery titled Reshaping Collections: Where History Meets Art from September 25, 2024 to September 28, 2025, featuring unique art creations by six diverse Chinese Canadian artists from across the country. These artists were invited to reinterpret historical and cultural objects and materials that explore the Canadian identity from the renowned Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
In Reshaping Collections, the museum commissioned six featured artists, Morris Lum, Karen Tam, Howie Tsui, Chih-Chien Wang, Janet Wang, and Stella Zheng, to create various forms of art and visual media, equipping them with the latest portable 3D scanning technology to research and replicate select objects from the more than 25,000 rare and unique historical items from the Chung Collection at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections.
“We were inspired to leverage the latest 3D scanning technology in our new Poy Family Gallery exhibition to reshape and modernize the way we utilize and access historical collections,” explains Dr. Melissa Karmen Lee, CEO of the Chinese Canadian Museum. “We are the first museum to use this 3D scanning technology to document the Chung Collection at UBC Library. We invited these six Chinese Canadian artists to support their inspiration and creativity, while connecting with Canadian history and identity.”
This new Chinese Canadian Museum exhibition includes a broad range of objects and materials: from photography to art installation, illustration to Penjing rock sculpture. Located on the first floor gallery space, the exhibition also features animation, film, and child-friendly wall text along with illustrated activities made exclusively for the exhibition.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the UBC Chung Collection. The Chinese Canadian Museum pays homage to the historically significant collection through this new exhibition. The Chinese Canadian Museum’s Reshaping Collections exhibition also coincides with the opening of the new Chung | Lind Gallery at UBC earlier this year. This exhibition is made possible with research support from the UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections.
The previous Odysseys and Migration exhibition in the Poy Family Gallery will be travelling to the Royal BC Museum in Victoria beginning in February 2025. Visitors can still enjoy the Chinese Canadian Museum’s main exhibition The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act on the second floor (until December 2024), as well as the permanent third floor Period Rooms: The Living Room and School Room.
The museum is also undergoing renovations in various areas of its building that are inaccessible to the public as part of its multi-year renewal project focused on revitalizing and upgrading more than 21,000 square feet of building space, including expanding the amount of exhibition and programming area to house future permanent and temporary exhibitions.
For more event details and background on the museum’s exhibitions, visit www.chinesecanadianmuseum.ca
About the Chinese Canadian Museum | chinesecanadianmuseum.ca
The Chinese Canadian Museum Society of British Columbia is an independent, non-profit organization established in March 2020 to create a museum honouring and sharing Chinese Canadian history, contributions, and living heritage. Guided by its mission statement “Connecting to the Chinese Canadian story – addressing inclusion for all”, the Chinese Canadian Museum aspires to provide an invigorating and transformative experience for present and future generations through its exhibitions and educational programming throughout B.C. and Canada.
The first of its kind in Canada, the Chinese Canadian Museum is located in the historic Wing Sang Building in Vancouver Chinatown, with a second temporary location at Fan Tan Alley in Victoria, B.C.
Instagram: @ccmuseumbc Facebook: @ChineseCanadianMuseum Linkedin: @ChineseCanadianMuseum
Media contact: Yvonne Chiang, 604-880-5090, yvonne@chiangpr.ca
About the Chung Collection at UBC Library:
Dr. Wallace B. Chung spent more than 90 years collecting everyday items that related to early British Columbia and Canadian history, including those that related to immigration and settlement of Chinese immigrants, as well as the Canadian Pacific Railway Company (CPR). Inspired by a large painting of the CPR’s steamship R.M.S. Empress of Asia in his father’s tailor shop in Victoria, Dr. Chung started collecting books, photographs, newspaper and magazine clippings, steamship logs, Chinese Immigration certificates, making regular trips to flea markets, and taking contributions from other collectors to amass his enormous lifetime collection. With the first major donation to UBC Library in 1999, the Chung Collection is one of the most exceptional and extensive collections of its kind in North America and has been designated as a national treasure by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board.
About the six featured Chinese Canadian artists:
Howie Tsui (Vancouver) – Born in Hong Kong, raised in Lagos and Thunder Bay, Howie Tsui works in ink brush, sound sculptures, lenticular lightboxes and installation, constructing tense, fictive environments that undermine venerated art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati tradition. He employs a stylized form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirize and disarm broadening regimes and their programs of cultural hegemony.
Janet Wang (Vancouver) – A second-generation settler of Chinese heritage, Janet Wang is a Vancouver-based visual artist and educator working within a traditional painting practice, integrated with sculptural installation practices and digital media. Her creations explore the construction of identity through the appropriation and disruption of social patterns and familiar gestures.
Stella Zheng (Vancouver) – Based in Vancouver, Stella Zheng is an artist and illustrator who utilizes a mix of traditional Chinese art-making tools and digital mediums to create illustrations that explore the intricacies of the Chinese diaspora and her identity. She strives to use illustration to present honest, multifaceted, and nuanced representations of Chinese culture that are often ignored. Her previous works include art installations and the catalogue for A Seat At the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia exhibition that was featured in the Chinese Canadian Museum.
Morris Lum (Mississauga) – Morris Lum is a Trinidadian-born photographer/artist whose work explores the hybrid nature of the Chinese-Canadian community through photography, form and documentary practices. His work also examines the ways in which Chinese history is represented in the media and archival material.
Karen Tam (Montreal) – Karen Tam is a Montreal-based artist and curator whose research focuses on the constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities. In her installations, she recreates Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters.
Chih-Chien Wang (Montreal) – Born in Taiwan and living in Montreal since 2002, Chih-Chien Wang is an artist who uses photography, video and objects and at times integrates text, performance and sound into his work, which explores the ordinary moments of everyday life that reflects his understanding of people, society and the city where he lives.
