In 1969, he refused an assignment from Time to go to Vietnam, and instead came to Vancouver. He soon became involved with groups such as Intermedia and the New Era Social Club. He has been invloved in numerous collaborative photography projects including 13 Cameras and The Origins of Man-Made Paradise. He is currently working on Origins/Original's and Nature-Made Paradise in the South Pacific.
He has a doctorate in Chinese History from York University and is an Associate Professor (Mass Communication) at California State University, Hayward. He has produced more than 30 television documentaries and was a journalist for CBC and TVB (Hong Kong) before moving to the US. He has written extensively on Chinese history, notably in Gold Mountain: The Chinese in the New World (1983) and Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China (1982). He is currently writing Quick and Dirty: The Politics of Television News in Chinese Asia and is producing a four-part series on Asian American vets of the Vietnam War.
Fung is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art, Photoelectric Arts Department (1977) and of the Cinema Studies program at the University of Toronto (1984). His videotapes Orientations, Chinese Characters, The Way To My Father's Village, and most recent work My Mother's Place, have been screened across Canada, the US, and in Europe. His work focuses on the intersection of sex, race and gender and has involved a critique of conventional media practices. He is active as a writer, lecturer and community organizer. He works at DEC Film/Video Distribution, Toronto, is involved with The Euclid - an independent theatre for film/video, and Northern Visions which produces the Images Film/Video Festival.
is a Vancouver-based choreographer and performer. He is the Executive Director of Kokoro Dance, an experimental dance company that has toured throughout Canada and Europe. Over the past ten years, he has performed with many of Vancouver's best known dance and theatre companies, including the Paula Ross Dance Company, Karen Jamieson Dance Company, Touchstone Theatre and EDAM. A strong interest in interdisciplinary performance has led to collaborations with Boston-based sculptor Bart Uchida, Roy Kiyooka, Sanke in the Grass Moving Theatre and Tokyo jazz poet Kazuko Shiraishi.
is a Vancouver photographer, poet, painter, sculptor, filmmaker and teacher who made a major contribution to the artistic community. He bgan exhibiting in the early 1950's. His works have been shown extensively in Canada and abroad, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery in Ottawa, and the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art.
immigrated to Canada in 1977 during the war betwwen the liberation movement and Ian Smith's white settler regime. Currently resident in ZImbabwe, she attended ECCAD, and graduated with honours in interdisciplinary Studies in 1983. Recent articles include "Women and Contemporary Culture in Zimbabwe", and "Decolonizing the Image", an interview with Zimbabwean filmmaker Miriam Patsanza. She facilitated a seminar on Women and Technology in Southern Africa (March 1990) sponsored by the UN in Harare with delegates from the SADCC (Southern Africa Development Conference Committee) region.
Vancouver artist Mary-Ann Liu works in sculpture and video. Her three-dimensional works include life and large bronzes, mythic creatures, and interpretive narrative figures. Her work has been exhibited throughout North America, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.
is a film and video scriptwriter based in Vancouver. He has worked in documentary film and experimental video dealing primarily with Asian subject matter. Recent projects include a high school economics curriculum and a play for teens called Glass House - A History of the Future.
His work reflects the social and political environment in which he is situated - Manila, Bangkok, Burma and Vancouver. His work has been shown at the Osaka Video Festival; Asian American International Video Festival, NYC; American Film Institute, LA; Infermental 8 (tokyo edition); Yellow Peril: New World Asians, London; Images 89, Toronto; and Asian New World, Vancouver. He is currently living and teaching English in Bangkok, Thailand.
She was raised in Vancouver and currently makes a living as a magazine editorial photographer. Rice was educated at the University of BC, ECCAD, and Banff Centre for the Arts. She has been exhibiting professionally since 1975. Solo and group exhibition include Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, Gallery VU in Quebec, Presentation House, Montgomery Cafe, The Convertible Showroom in Vancouver, and Gallery Plennings in Eindhoven. She is currently working on her first video production.
immigrated to Canada in 1969 as a statement of protest against the US involvement in the Vietnam War. She has worked as a professional actress, musician and producer, and began to explore video in the 1980's. She relocated to Vancouver in 1987. Her work has been screened at Invisible Colours, Vancouver; New Langton Arts, San Francisco; Show The Right Thing, a national conference on Multi-Cultural Film and Video, NYC; In Living Color: Representations of Race and Civil Rights, LA; the National Gallery, Ottawa; the American Film Institute, LA; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Video In, Vancouver; and Images 89, Toronto.
is the unofficial photo-chronicler for Vancouver's Little Tokyo. He is an active community organizer and one of the founders of the Powell Street Festival. His photoworks have been exhibited in numerous international group an one-man shows including the Canadian Centre of Photography, Toronto; the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; the Chisenhale Gallery, London; and the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. He is currently working on a photographic exhibition and book on 14 Powell Street Festivals, 1977-1991, Powell Street Festival: A Celebration of Nikkei Renewal.
Paul Wong creates work in video, performance, photography and installation. He is a media arts pioneer and veteran, the first and youngest artist to break many barriers in the Canadian art scene when he picked up his first Portapak camera.
Many of his projects were developed for site-specific contexts, unique public venues, community centres, artist-run spaces, festivals, museums, closed circuit broadcast and television. In 1992, he was the recipient of the Bell Canada Award for Video Art in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of the art form.
He is a self-taught artist who has been an activist against censorship, for artistic freedom, against racism since the early 1970's when he worked with street kids through Satellite Art Programs 1972-78. He has helped to create mentorship and internships for younger artists through workshops. He has demonstrated national leadership in the Canadian Artist Run Movement (ANNPAC Vice-President) and hundreds of curated programs. He was editor of Video Guide and has contributed to many other media arts magazines.
In addition, he is an active cultural strategist in Vancouver and nationally. He co-founded the Video In Studios (1973), Canada's leading electronic arts access, production, distribution and exhibition centre. He is also the Artistic Director of On Edge (1985), a non-profit organization that initiates challenging art projects. Both organizations import and export international programs, host visiting artists, curate exhibitions and publish books on new popular culture.
Recent works such as Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World (1996) premiered at the 11th Annual International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, July 1996 and had its U.S. premiere on Oct. 1996 at the "New Documentaries" series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was video director and co-producer of Jazz Slave Ships, Witness, I Burn - a site-specific installation and performance by Vancouver artist Jan Wade in Whitehaven, U.K. in October, 1996. He is currently in post-production on Cultural Baggage - a multi-channel work featuring High-8 video footage from around the world.
Other video productions include So Are You - an exploration into cultural and sexual stereotyping by the dominant culture, and Mixed Messages - interviews with an Asian transsexual about gender reassignment. These works were both featured in On Becoming A Man - an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (Sept.21,1995-Jan.7,1996). This solo exhibition of eleven selected video works by Wong made between 1976-1995. The four multi-media installations remounted in their original forms were: in ten sity, Confused: Sexual Views, Chinaman's Peak: Walking The Mountain and Mixed Messages. The seven single-channel videotapes were 60 Unit Bruise, 4, Prime Cuts, Confused, Body Fluid, Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shade and So Are You. The exhibition catalogue in English and French, with a Chinese summary, includes illuminating essays by National Gallery curator Jean Gagnon, and Vancouver writers Elspeth Sage and Monika Gagnon.
Wong was the curator of Yellow Peril: Reconsidered - an exhibition of film, video and photography by 25 Asian Canadian artists that toured to 6 Canadian cities (1990-91). Other projects include curator of Kikyo: Coming Home to Powell Street (1992); a solo exhibition of Chinaman's Peak: Walking The Mountain (1993) at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; feng shui adviser and an artist in the Feng Shui (1993) exhibition in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; director of the videotape document of the installation of Temple of My Familiar (1995) in Belfast.
His installation Windows 97 premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, England in May, 1997 in the international exhibition Fortune Cookies featuring contemporary work by Chinese diasporic artists from around the world.
Other recent projects:
THE FIRST EMPEROR'S LAST DAYS
Victoria Theatre,Singapore June 13-14, August 10 -22 was a directing collaboration with THEATREWORKS.Written by Tarn How and directed by Ong Ken Sen, this work is a political allegory billed as a psychological thriller.. It was an ambitious experimental work for the stage that was a fusion of artistic ideas and forms: conventional drama, abstraction, surveillance video, electronic and installation art.This new multi-media and theatre event was created for the 1998 Singapore Arts Festival.
DEAD MAN TALKING
March 22, South London Gallery, U.K.was a multi-media event as part of Parallel Universe, a series on art and non-Western medicine and science. The installation, performance and lectures series was a project by Arts Catalyst, the science & art agency.
WINDOWS 97
May 16 - June 8, Nunnery Gallery, London. U.K.The installation of neon and photo canvases was the inaugural exhibition of the Nunnery Gallery in East London. This exhibition was the third stop of the year long U.K. tour. Windows 97 was created for Fortune Cookies, the Chinese Diaspora series at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art in London) in May 1997. The site-specific work was created for the Nash Room windows that face the royal ceremonial route on Pall Mall. Windows is a monumental work that acknowledges the de/recolonization of Hong Kong. Commissioned by the ICA Live Arts and Locus +.
THEM=US
1998 - 2000 Canadian Tour is a an exhibition featuring the work of twenty photographers.Wong was commissioned to photograph Chinese Cafes in BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan during a month long drive through the wild west. A book and cd-rom will be published in Fall 1999. The exhibition has already toured to over four dozen venues: museums, malls, office complexes, and community centres through 2000. Produced by The Harmony Movement (Toronto)
THE FIVE ENERGIES - CHINESE CAFES
Open Studio, Toronto May 5 - 31, is a limited edition series of prints produced during a residency in Sept. 1997. The series is based on historical, family and recent photographs of Chinese Cafe culture in Western Canada. The Taoist system of the Five Energies Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water and its corresponding colors influenced the anesthetics of the series. Series of five 22" x 44" photo silkscreen prints.
SITTING OUT DESERT STORM IN PARIS
was a photo essay created for the May/June issue of Front Magazine (Vancouver). 7 pages of photomontages and story were written for the'after the revolution" issue. It is travelogue set in Paris.
WAH-Q: OVERSEAS CHINESE
Journey To The East Performances Jan 21-23, Shousen Theatre, Hong Kong Journey To The East Installation March, Hong University of Science & Technology Jiangnan, April 8, Grunt Gallery, Vancouver WAH-Q, is a work about sexual identity and was created for Journey To The East using the Peking Opera tradition of two actors, two chairs and a table. WAH-Q is a video performance using live action, live and prerecorded video sources. An installation version was created for gallery exhibition.
VIDEOTAPES IN CIRCULATION:
MISS CHINATOWN: National Gallery purchase, Worldwide Video Fest, Amsterdam
CHINAMANS PEAK: WALKING THE MOUNTAIN is touring with Track Records & Scanning Histories
BLENDING MILK + WATER: SEX IN THE NEW WORLD was broadcast on Knowledge as part of Video In 25th Anniversary Series in October in ten sity + 60 Unit + Prime Cuts sold to Concordia University
He was brought to Vancouver as a "paper son", where he was raised by aunts and uncles. He became part of the Chinese Canadian cafe landscape, working in restaurants and greasy spoons throughout Chinese North America, eventually putting down roots in Vancouver's Chinatown. Wong-Chu spent four years at the Vancouver Art School and has since worked as a comunity organizer, historian, and radio broadcaster. He is a founding member of the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop, as well as being a full-time letter carrier for Canada Post. His book of poetry Chinatown Ghosts was published to critical acclaim in 1986. He is currently editing an anthology of Chinese Canadian writers.
Vancouver artist and teacher, Yuen has exhibited in British Columbia, Europe and Australia. She is a graduate of the Fine Arts program at the University of Victoria with further studies in Banff, Montreal and Japan. Yuen lectures and teaches throughout B.C., including at Emily Carr College of Art and Design, and Metchosin Inter. Summer School for the Arts. She is the proprietor of Kakali Papers, a studio that specializes in handmade papers.. Her work has been exhibited at the Burnaby Art Gallery's exhibition Culturally (dis) Placed , Self Not Whole and in a solo show Like a Plague of Locusts at the Pitt Gallery, Vancouver, in January, 1993.