Vancouver exhibit explores Asian Canadian identity through nostalgia to evoke connection

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Vancouver’s Gallery 881 is featuring a new art exhibition called “Where I’m from,” which displays a collection of photos and physical objects evoking the familiar nostalgia of growing up in an Asian Canadian household, until March 9. 

The project, created collectively by Jeremy Jude Lee and Megan Kwan, delves into the experience of Asian Canadians switching between two cultures while growing up in the neighbourhoods of Metro Vancouver. 

“What we’re trying to depict through this project is that it’s its own unique thing to be from two worlds at once, as I’m sure a lot of people can identify with it,” Lee says. 

As Chinese Canadians, Lee and Kwan aimed to showcase Canadian Asian identity from their local perspective through portraits, street photos, and daily artifacts. Their work represents themes of belonging, acceptance, community, and culture.

One section of photos features portraits of four Asian boys, captured over the course of a summer day at specific locations in Vancouver that hold significance to them. 

“We took more of a shared memory based approach. We talked with the boys … about what we remember about this place and its importance in our memory and our formative years,” Lee says. 

“We set out to shoot with the mentality that it was us capturing the essence of what we felt through our nostalgia for being from this place.”

Street photos of Vancouver during the summertime is another series through which Lee wanted to capture the city the way he remembers it.

“During that summer, anytime there was a clear day, I would just go out with my camera around the streets and just take pictures that felt like they painted the memory of Vancouver for me,” Lee says.

“I realized at that time, as I get older … time goes on, life changes, things change, and the city was very visibly changing.”

Bringing daily objects into a gallery setting was Kwan’s idea to make the exhibition more immersive. People, regardless of their background, could look at the artifacts and experience similar flashbacks, Lee says, adding that growing up in an Asian household means there are certain things a lot of people might recognize and relate to. 

“Say the little plastic stools that you find at your grandma’s or auntie’s house that would be either for reaching high things in the cabinet or sitting at the kids table, [or] random fabrics and cloths that your mom or grandma never threw away because it might always come into use,” Lee says. 

These objects embody the concept of resourcefulness and prompt viewers to look at their significance. Whether or not you grew up in an Asian household, you might recognize them because of the multicultural nature of Vancouver, Lee says.

Lee hopes the exhibition can offer visitors to feel more connected to the people next to them and help evoke memories from their own life.

“I want to be able to show you something that feels like it was really told from the heart and show something that conveys a human experience, … so it makes you feel like the gap between our experiences is a lot closer than we sometimes think.”