Local artist invites community to learn about Chinese diaspora through art exhibit

When Mary Sui Yee Wong started out as a young artist in the 1980s, she didn’t see much art that would reflect her experience as an immigrant child and diasporic Chinese Canadian. 

This became one of Wong’s inspirations to create artwork that would speak to her community and the broader public about topics such as migration, racism, and trauma, which nobody usually discussed, she says. 

Wong’s work, created over multiple years, is on display until June 8 at the Richmond Art Gallery through an exhibit called Restless by Nature: Mary Sui Yee Wong, 1990s to the present. The featured artwork showcases photographs, video, sculptures, and costumes, among other mediums. 

Wong says she always made objects that represented and referenced her cultural identity, adding she worked with materials that would convey such. She could dye rice or use silk fabric, for instance. 

“A lot of my work stems from the personal, but is also very political and critical at the same time,” Wong says. “I’m very adamant about making sure that what I reference doesn’t just sit with [the] personal. It’s not only about me, but it also speaks to the greater issues around me.” 

Among the work presented at the exhibit is a series of photographs from her Yellow Apparel fashion line, which aims to critique the fashion that appropriated First Nations’ cultures. 

The name plays on the term “yellow peril,” which refers to the fear of Asian people coming to the western world and expanding their power. It also portrays how fashion companies like American Apparel appropriated culture in its products, Wong says. 

“There was a whole kind of hype [with] people even borrowing costumes from the First Nations people and making fashion, so I wanted to do something that was critical of that,” Wong says.

“I made a series of clothes that, when you wear them, you can tell that they’re problematic, but at the same time, it’s almost like an effort to reappropriate what was appropriated,” Wong says.

For her “Nature Mort” installation, Wong revisits her past work and incorporates objects gathered from Vancouver’s Chinatown, which she covered with materials resembling moss.

“The piece often sits in a public garden space, so it looks like there’s life that’s happened, but moss has grown all over it,” Wong says.

The exhibition also features “Gold Mountain,” performance-based work in which Wong will smash a maquette of a pagoda before covering the mound in gold leaf. 

The performance explores systemic racism driven by a neoliberal economy, depicting the danger and destruction experienced by members of the Asian community, according to a press release. With this performance, Wong aims “to invoke the act of witnessing by commanding

the audience’s attention, while forging something beautiful out of something ugly.”

Wong says she works to reach more than one audience and hopes the exhibit invites viewers to raise questions and appreciate some of the aesthetics of her culture. 

“I know that my artwork can speak in one way to a non-western audience and in another way to a western non-Chinese audience,” she says. 

“I’m hoping that somewhere, through my practice, I’m able to bridge gaps between both audiences and invite them to want to have a deeper understanding of what the lived experiences of the Chinese diaspora are like.” 

For more information, visit www.richmondartgallery.org/restlessbynature.