Paul Wong’s Occupying Chinatown, is a beautifully detailed, limited edition hardcover book, fully bilingual in English and Simplified Chinese, focusing on several of Wong’s major artworks exploring Chinese-Canadian identity and his engagement with Vancouver’s Chinese communities. With full colour photos and documentation of Wong’s artwork as well as three original essays, Occupying Chinatown is an evocative exploration of language, amnesia, and cultural displacement, inspired by 900 letters sent to Suk-Fong Wong, Paul Wong’s mother, over the course of 65 years.
Published by On Main Gallery
ISBN: 978-0-9694777-7-8
Edition of 500
Hardcover: Black linen with silver deboss
180 pages
29.85cm x 23.5cm x 1.59cm, 1kg
Release: September, 2021
$80 CAD
Available at select bookstores
Vancouver Art Gallery Review
Paul Wong’s Occupying Chinatown, a beautifully detailed, limited edition hardcover book, fully bilingual in English and Simplified Chinese, focuses on several of Wong’s major artworks exploring Chinese Canadian identity and his engagement with Vancouver’s Chinese communities. With full colour photos and documentation of Wong’s artwork as well as three original essays, Occupying Chinatown is an evocative exploration of language, amnesia, and cultural displacement, inspired by 900 letters sent to Suk-Fong Wong, Paul Wong’s mother, over the course of 65 years.
I am not an academic; this book is not an historical document. I am neither an ethnographer nor a documentarian, and this is not a memoir or a genealogical family account. Above all, I have approached this out of curiosity about what has been lost through silence. Occupying Chinatown has provided a conceptual frame for inspiring a prolific outpouring of artworks combining fragments of memory, language, and ephemeral histories. It has continued and will continue to allow me to look at everyday things as anything but ordinary.
— Paul Wong
Occupying Chinatown features original collages, reproductions and stills from several of Wong’s significant works including Father’s Words, based on his mother’s letters; Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shade, a 1988 video work exploring Wong’s first trip back to China; Mother’s Cupboard / 媽媽的藥櫃, a series of prints featuring his mother’s treasured jars of traditional elixirs and ingredients; and Saltwater City – Vancouver /咸水埠温哥华, a neon piece installed in several locations throughout Vancouver.
Below: Vancouver Biennale presents Occupying Chinatown pop-up exhibition and book signing, Nov 6, 2021. Photo credit Roaming-the-planet, Paul Wong and Christian Yves Jones.
