A CHINESE DANCE
Edward Cheung
The Cube
September 15 to November 3, 2018
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
The 2018 Curator’s Choice exhibition features a new project by Edward Cheung. The artist works with photography and video to explore his Chinese-Canadian heritage and the changing cultural and geographic community where he grew up. Investigating a pivotal shift in the place he calls home, Cheung addresses the loss of heritage and cultural spaces within Vancouver’s Chinatown by critiquing the methods that developers use to preserve and acknowledge spaces that have been lost to gentrification. A Chinese Dance speaks to the way in which commercial endeavours and the tourism industry are effecting changes to the cultural fabric of this historic community. The social and architectural landscape in Cheung’s scenes are activated through audience participation as the viewer’s presence directly disrupts and degrades the images they are viewing. This intervention is a prompt for viewers to consider how their presence affects the work in the gallery and how collective actions can have unintended consequences in the gentrification of communities and cultural spaces.
This year's Curator’s Choice is the 14th annual exhibition of work by a student graduating from Thompson Rivers University. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, Curator’s Choice annually highlights emerging artists from TRU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts graduating class, giving them an opportunity to create new work for a professional exhibition space outside the context of school.
Edward Cheung
Grasping at mists, 2017-2018
Video projection onto water vapor
Image courtesy of the Artist
