During the preparations for an exhibition of new sculptural works at PLATFORM gallery, I used my parents home as a studio and temporary exhibition space. The sculptural works are recreations of Western Modern Art forms through large photographs depicting metal surfaces found in the Chinese Collection at the Royal Ontario Museum. The sculptures reflect a confluence of paradoxical positions that I find myself with as an artist operating in Western Art and as Chinese diaspora. footnote was created to aestheticize the presence of the sculptures in my parents home.
Why are there no Chinese-Canadian or Asian-Canadian artists exhibiting in Canadian museums?
Why is ‘Chineseness’ overrepresented in Canadian museums through the museological display of precariously acquired Chinese antiquities?
What are the ethics of reshaping precariously acquired Chinese antiquities into forms mediated by the aesthetic tastes of Western Art History?
My parent’s home proved to be quite a symbolically rich space to contemplate, question, and problematize the sculptures. Each image is highly staged in the arrangement of domestic objects and furniture within my parent’s home, and with the placement of the sculptures to obstruct the view of the camera. Each image is calculated in the performativity of ‘Chineseness’ by the Western gaze that is possessed by myself and the art system that footnote circulates.