Let’s Heal The Divide
Welcome to Chinatown series
Inkjet Print
2023
40×48 inch (100x122cm) Edition of 9 (+2AP)

Chinatown is becoming a cultural hub because the affordability of artists while the Chinese descendant residents no longer require a separate Chinatown to inhabit their culture, food, medicinal and culturally specific interests. Greater Vancouver is as much a Chinese city as it is so for any of multi-cultural communities who make it their home. A younger generation of Chinese descendants are beginning to rediscover Chinatown along with new comers as a kind of exotic experience, especially with numerous diverse cultural events manifesting in the area. The title directly borrows from a neon text based publish art hanged on a Chinatown heritage building façade on Keefer street.

Chinatown, for me is a signification of isolation, sub- occupational territory and conservative ideological state. The question addresses to what’s is authentic of “Chinese Culture” is always there and it became to a conflict lieu of how westerner look at the Chinese and how Chinese look at how westerner look at the Chinese. I rather called it the symbol of cultural dislocation. Me, as a new comer, I don’t belong to the Chinatown, but people think I belong to Chinatown or somehow connected with Chinatown because I’m Chinese! Quebecois speaks French but they denied they are French. Argentine speaks Spanish but they denied they are Spanish. Native English speakers are everywhere but they are not the British. Chinese, and Chinese culture is the one with strong centralization will, maybe it is from the long and continuously centralize history. This topic also addresses to the definition/identity of Chinese diaspora in a larger context.

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