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Art Gallery exhibition explores nourishment

By Hannah Scott, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Published 2:03 PST, Fri January 28, 2022

Last Updated: 5:27 PST, Fri January 28, 2022

The Richmond Art Gallery just opened its newest exhibition NOURISH, which aims to help people find connections to nourishment and care. The exhibition features American poet and writer Jane Wong and Greater Vancouver artist duo Mizzonk (Wan-Yi Lin and Roger Chen).

Curator Nan Capogna says the exhibition is the culmination of nearly two years of planning, after the pandemic delayed her initial plans. However the pandemic also provided a new backdrop for this combination of Wong and Mizzonk’s works.

“We created a new context for bringing these two works together, and issues around nourishment and care seem to come up in (both). I felt that they were very different, but there was also an alignment in terms of some of their themes,” Capogna explains.

“I hope (people) are able to find connections with the work, the ideas in the work, (and) that there is a connection with their own lives. I anticipate that people will be really quite moved by the works because they are narratives that are quite common to everyone.”

The art gallery is also offering public programming that accompanies the exhibition, which runs through April 3. To learn more, click here.


Sculpting with words

Wong started writing as a youngster growing up in New Jersey. She often spent time at her family’s restaurant or the public library across the street.

“So many of the books I read at the public library never featured protagonists who looked like me or had my experience,” she says. “It felt really important to me as a young person to share my heritage and my own Chinese-American experience.”

Wong’s main piece on display at the Richmond Art Gallery is called After Preparing the Altar, The Ghosts Feast Feverishly. To read the whole poem, people must walk around the table and look at bowls that hold fragments of the text. 

“On the page, to some degree, a poem has to begin and end somewhere,” says Wong. “The fact that it’s on the table now as a sculpture, the poem literally does not end. To translate that into a sculpture gives another voice or breath of air to a poem.”

She adds that her mom’s family is able to experience her work despite not having strong English skills. She appreciates being able to lift her words off the page and give them a new shape.

Wong’s mom, a gifted storyteller she describes as the “centre of the party,” is her primary inspiration. But the cultural and sensory nature of food is also a source of ideas and motivation.

“During COVID and the early days of quarantine, I had a lot of trouble focusing on writing anything. So I would just cook. Then I (thought): that’s a poem, maybe this soup is a poem,” says Wong.

She wants people to take away the contrasting ideas of gluttony and scarcity. The table poem also evokes the history of hunger in many Chinese families, tracing back to the period prior to the Cultural Revolution when millions starved to death. Wong says the voice of the bowls is that of her family members who didn’t survive, but who want to pass on a message of celebrating and sharing a meal.

“Even though it’s such a dark, grief-filled, loss-filled time (with) a lot of trauma, I really wanted this poem to feel joyful like a feast,” says Wong.

And in the accompanying video piece, Wong cuts the words of her poem out of rice paper, folds them into dumplings and eats them. She’s grateful for the connection between folding dumplings—which she did at her family’s restaurant growing up—and the poetry that consumes her time now.


Inspired by open space

Mizzonk’s work Six Acres is named after the duo’s home, a property of the same size. Wan-Yi Lin and Roger Chen have collaborated since sharing a studio in Brooklyn, New York, and find inspiration in the natural environment that surrounds them. Six Acres came about in 2019 when Lin was working with watercolour paint for the first time. 

“I think naturally both of us are very hands-on people, so we like to explore possibilities through mediums,” says Lin. “In a natural setting like this, we’re very into the introspection and reflection and very interested in the topics of self-observing, so our place has really set a foundation for us in our art practice.”

Lin and Chen made the move from New York following the events of 9/11. Chen explains the tragedy made them realize that life can be fragile and short, in addition to impacting their business in architectural model-making.

“We had a chance to reflect on what we really want to do with our lives and where we want to live, and it was very clear that we wanted the freedom to create rather than to provide services to others. It’s always been a dream of mine ever since I was a kid to live in nature, so we followed our hearts and our intuition and moved to a rural place,” says Chen.

The piece on display in Richmond is a video installation made by animating a series of watercolour drawings. This is the first time the animations will be shown, and Lin continues to work on more paintings for the series.

“Just have a little faith in intuition, and don’t underestimate what taking a stroll in nature can do,” says Lin of the takeaways she hopes people have. 

“For us, nature really reminds us that we are connected to something larger. The way we see humans and nature is that they’re connected, not separated. So spending time in nature is like spending time with ourselves, which is self-care.”

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