What should a person do when constantly asked about their origins, except laughing it off?
Florence Yee, a Cantonese visual artist born and raised in Montréal, invites Sudbury’s community to play with its own preconceptions about Asian and immigrant diasporas with her exhibition “But really, where are you from?” taking place at the Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario (GNO) June 1-30.
An opening reception takes place at the GNO June 1 starting at 5 p.m. Yee will be answering questions.
The artist subverts daily life objects to show how the Asian culture is being locked in traditional representations and objects that don’t coincide with the contemporary, North American identity of immigrants and of their offspring.
She questions the nostalgia felt for the mother country by those who lived away from it all their life and who don’t recognize themselves in its sterile manifestations, cleared from all forms of socio-political commitment.
Nostalgia is misleading: too often, it’s imposed as an exclusive way of knowing a culture, when said culture keeps evolving and projects itself in the future. What is more authentic than a culture constantly reinventing its own codes?
“The blue and white vases we the first pieces of my Stuffed Kitsch series,” Yee said. “I take the object and I make it more common, less exotic, like it doesn’t come from that far away.
“I would like the visitors to think critically about the objects that surround them, so that they understand the role social and political history played in placing these objects between their hands.”
In contrast to commoditized Cantonese culture crystallized in preset representations (typical objects, Chinatowns and other facades of identity), the artist re-appropriates codes that are specific to Asian culture and thereby aspires to a rewriting of the history of its diaspora.
GNO is located at 174 Elgin St. Phone 705-673-4927.
