Solo Exhibition: September 17, 2022 – January 8 2023
Curated by Tara Ng, organized by Art Gallery of Hamilton
Gallery: Varley Art Gallery of Markham
Address: 216 Main St Unionville, Unionville, ON L3R 2H1
Opening Reception: September 17, 2022, 2:00pm – 5:00pm
Artist Talk: November 16, 2022, 12:30 to 1:30 PM (EST)

Chun Hua Catherine Dong brings together two major performance and photographic series by the Chinese-born, Montreal-based artist—Skin Deep (2014–20) and I Have Been There (2015–ongoing)—along with a selection of recent VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), and 3D-printed works that address themes of diaspora, gender, and belonging. Dong reinterprets traditional Chinese symbols and practices to explore her hybrid cultural identity, navigate her ambivalent relationship to her homeland, and challenge social binaries and stereotypes.

Skin Deep examines the link between shame and the face in Chinese culture. Shame, or losing face, serves as a form of social control that prevents individuals—particularly women—from acting in ways that might disrupt the status quo. In this series of photographic self-portraits featuring an AR (Augmented Reality) component, Dong conceals her face in the same traditional Chinese silk fabrics that comprise the background. This expression of shame and loss of individuality reflects not only Dong’s experiences as a young woman in China but also as an immigrant in Canada.

In I Have Been There, Dong covers her body with a beautiful silk duvet as she lies on the ground at culturally significant sites or events around the world. Her performance is based on a funeral tradition in her hometown of Yueyang, in Hunan Province, in which the daughters of a deceased person each make a duvet to place over their loved one’s body. Dong adapts the ritual to her own particular circumstances and performs it as a poetic expression of her diasporic identity and engagement with different cultures and spaces.

For more info about this exhibition, please visit Varley Art Gallery’s website

Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese-born Montreal-based artist working with performance, photography, video, AR, VR and 3D printing. Dong received an MFA from Concordia University and BFA from Emily Carr University Art & Design. Dong’s work has been exhibited in many national and international venues. Dong was the recipient of the Franklin Furnace Award for performance art in New York in 2014 and listed the “10 Artists Who Are Reinventing History” by Canadian Art in 2017. Dong was a finalist for Contemporary Art Award at Le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec 2020 and awarded with Cultural Diversity in Visual Arts from the Conseil des arts de Montréal in 2021.

Tara Ng is an art historian and independent curator who is currently an editorial and programming associate at the Art Canada Institute. Previously, she served as Associate Curator at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (2018–20), where she curated the exhibitions Norval Morrisseau (2018–19) and Chun Hua Catherine Dong (2021). Apart from her curatorial work, Ng has worked in development positions at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Egale Canada Human Rights Trust. Her writing is featured in the exhibition publication Norval Morrisseau: Toward Another World (2019), AGH Magazine, and Global Engagements in Contemporary Canadian Art (2013). Ng holds an MA from Concordia University and a BA and BHSc from McMaster University.

 

Chun Hua Catherine Dong would like to thanks The Canada Council for the Arts  and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) for their generous support