new media – Page 2 – Chun Hua Catherine Dong

Commissioned Public Art – Nuit Blanche Toronto

Commission Project: Skin Deep
Commissioned by: City of Toronto
Curated by: Julie Nagam
Nuit Blanche Toronto
October 1-2, 2022, 7:00pm -7:00am
North York Centre Library
5120 Yonge St, North York, ON M2N 5N9

Symposium: A Home for our Migrations
Artscape Daniels Launchpad, Sugar Hall, Toronto
September 29, 2022, 11:15am – 12:30pm

Chinese shame is rooted around the concept of face which refers to a cultural understanding of respect, honor and social standing. Shame is used as a tool of social control and harmony, as a way to prevent citizens— especially women—from acting in ways that might disrupt the status quo. Dong creates a series of ID card photographs with faces concealed in Chinese traditional silk fabrics. The act of masking is a performance of submission to the powerful effects of shame in which Dong obliterates their own individuality while being completely absorbed into a cultural identity. It refers both to the quality of only being seen for Dong’s Chinese background as an immigrant in Canada, and the subsequent lack of acknowledgement of their full personhood as a girl when in China. “Skin Deep” is an act of drawing back the curtain and pointing to the deeply embedded feelings of shame that can cause women to hold back and stay silent, transforming the performative gestures into experiences that are understood to be universal and relatable.

For more info about the project, please click here
For more info about the project at Nuit Blanche website, please click here

Solo Exhibition – Varley Art Gallery of Markham

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

Solo Exhibition – TRUCK Contemporary Art

Exhibition: May 27 – July 2, 2022
Gallery: TRUCK Contemporary Art
Address: 2009 10 Ave SW, Calgary, AB, T3C 0K4
Opening Reception:May 27, 2022 – 6 PM to 10 PM (M:ST)
Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday – 1 PM to 6 PM (M:ST)
Artist Talk: June 3, 2022

Featuring virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 3D-printed sculptures, video, and performance photographs, At the Edge of Two Worlds explores new digital possibilities for bridging gaps between memories and experiences, whilst mediating culture and identity through the lens of gender and diaspora. It speaks to the ways in which gender is explored, lost, created and re-created, and how digital diasporic experiences have shaped the notion of home and self with the rise of digitalization and globalization. In the space of digital experimentation and representation, Dong blurs the boundaries of two worlds: here and there, actual and virtual, culture and nature, human and animal. Futures are envisioned, which dissolve binaries and borders, creating a new social relation that sustains different ways of living and diverse beings as an act of survival.

For more info about this exhibition, please visit TRUCK Contemporary Art’s website

Solo Exhibition – New York

Exhibition: March 11 – April 2, 2022
In-person vernissage: Friday, March 11, , 6:00-9:00 PM
Artist talk (online): March 31, 2022, 6:30 PM
Gallery: Arcade Project Curatorial
Address: 56 Bogart, Brookyn, NY 11206

Cleavage refers to mitosis, a fundamental process for life. During mitosis, a cell duplicates all of its contents, including its chromosomes, and splits to form two identical daughter cells. Dong’s work explores the immigrant journey of identity: a splitting of the self into parts. The immigrant separates from their country of birth, entering their adopted country as the “other”. The immigrant becomes a person of two lands, not fully fitting in with either. When the immigrant returns to the land of their birth, they are not at home – they are visitors, tourists. The “home” that they hold as a memory is idealized in their mind. It doesn’t exist in the physical realm.

Skin Deep (2014-2020) explores the relationship between the concepts of shame and face in Chinese culture. Shame, or losing face, functions as a form of social control that prevents individuals—particularly women—from acting in ways that might disrupt the status quo. The series explores the concept of losing face in a series of photographic self-portraits, combined with an AR component, in which they conceal their face in traditional Chinese brocade silk fabrics that also comprise the background, signifying the loss of individual identity and absorption into a cultural identity.

Mulan (2022), a VR installation, inspired by the aesthetics of Beijing opera, splits the titular legendary heroine into two dueling warriors – shifting from singular to plural and back again. Mulan’s intense palette and undersea setting are references to Nudibranchs, colorful hermaphroditic mollusks that cannot self-fertilize and, despite having all the necessary equipment, require another to complete the reproductive cycle.

When I Was Born, My Father Said I Was Just Another Mouth to Feed, performance video (2010) and 3-D printed sculptures (2021), suggest that this cleavage of identity isn’t always complete: a ghost of the parents and their actions remains imprinted on the child. The bear’s four ears suggest a part of the child that has not completely separated. The bear’s pose is reminiscent of the prostration of both prayer and corporal punishment — a superimposed gesture of both hope and shame.

This exhibition has been made possible thanks to generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts.