Winter exhibition 2021

Hey folks, today I’ll be reflecting on my last project of the year 2021, Ology of apology. The driving question for this project is “How can we create a public memory of past wrongs so that they are remembered and not repeated today?” We worked through November to December learning the dark side of Canadian history and the government’s apologies in regard to these three topics: Komagata Maru, Anti-Chinese immigration, and Japanese internment. After a month of studying the histories and apologies, we finally started working on our “Memorials” as our answers to the driving question.

First we studied about the Komagata Maru incident, which is about the mistreatment towards the South Asians that wanted to immigrate to Canada. Even though most of the people on the ship were British subjects, they were rejected from coming to Canada because of their skin color. The federal government even passed a law called the “Continuous journey law”, which stopped the Indians from coming to Canada indirectly. However, the government did apologize for this more than a century later. On one of our field studies, we went to a museum next to a Sikh temple which taught me more about the mistreatments that the South Asian faced when immigrating and why the apology was important to their community.

We then moved on to our second topic, Anti-Chinese immigration. We went on three different field studies which were all in Chinatown, Vancouver. The Chinese Canadians had a different story than the South Asian community. Before the exclusion act, many Chinese people managed to stay here, but still faced racism. They came to Canada seeking for better lives, but ended up being cheap labourers for the railway. Later on the Government didn’t want more Chinese immigrants, so they added two discriminatory laws, the Chinese head tax and the exclusion act. The official apology was published in 2006 over 100 years later. The Chinese Canadian museum we visited was very well designed, it had videos of different peoples stories, and their experiences through racism back then. The “BBQ Shadow arts” in the museum inspired me when I was designing my own memorial.

Lastly, we studied the Japanese Internment. Japan was at war with Canada during WW2. Racism had taken place for many decades, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor they were viewed as enemies. Even though a lot of them were born in Canada and didn’t know how to speak Japanese, they were put into internment camps. Some were forced to work on farms, and some were forced to work as lumberers, separated from their families. All their properties such as houses and boats were sold without their permission, and the money went into maintaining the internment camps. In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney formally apologized to the Japanese Canadians for the interment and seizure of properties they faced during the war. We visited a museum, and a Japanese garden on one of our field studies, which helped me to visualize my own memorial for my future topic.

We didn’t start working on our memorials until the last two weeks of the project. In fact, we didn’t even know our final product was gonna be a memorial. Although we were kind of rushed when building and designing our memorials, it worked out smoothly for my group.

In order to create a superb public memory we need to create an environment to let people experience the past and consider the reasons why their repartitions are still important to us today. So my group came up with idea “Cut-out”. Our memorial is based on traditional Chinese paper cutting. Our three paper cuttings memorialize Chinese Immigration, anti-Chinese laws, and the official Canadian government apology for those events in 2006. We blended the Chinese culture with the history of anti-Chinese oppression to show you the story of what the Chinese Canadians went through.

We believe that the official apologies given by the Canadian government are important to us today. The past cannot be changed but we can prevent the mistakes from happening again. This is why our memorial is important, it educates people on the past wrong-doings and symbolizes a turning point in Canadian reconciliation.

My group had a great start when it comes to our memorial. The day before our first working session, my group brainstormed our theme for our memorial. We all agreed that Chinese paper cutting would be a great idea, so that’s what we did. Later, we finalized our design for the exhibition. We planned to have a movable light source on a railway and project the shadows of the paper cuttings on a wall. On the education side, we had small plaques that tells people the stories behind each paper cutting.

Overall, I am pretty proud of my work, and I’m also impressed with the teamwork we had as a group. We had tasks for everyone, and each of us played our roles well. I worked hard as the builder/designer of the physical model of our group. Each of us did a separate paper cutting. I worked on the “Journey”, Amy worked on the “Not welcomed”, and Indira worked on the “Apology”. I borrowed the Lego railway and wheels from Jakub, and built the minecart out of cardboard. I printed out the plaques that Amy wrote, and glued them onto my cardboard frames. We also had a map of our memorial’s ideal location if we were ever going to build one.

On the exhibition day my group came prepared and settled everything early. In the first half of the exhibition, Amy was busy directing guests at the front door, so me and Indira were taking care of the station. In the second half of the exhibition, Indira and Amy were doing most of the work because it was my birth day, so I got to do less work. Just kidding, I only went on break for a little while, and during that time I was visiting other stations in our room. I saw a lot of unique and interesting designs of memorials over the room, but the one that caught my eyes the most was the “anchor” at the front door. They didn’t have spectacular monument models, but they did have all the unused tables and 1/3 of the room. They made sure that no one would walk by their station, and it worked out really well.

If I could do this project again, I would write a script to talk with my audiences. I did pretty well at introducing the purpose of my memorial, and summarizing the idea of our memorial, but I was mainly talking the first things that came to my mind. I was lacking information and details when I was guiding them through my station. Me and Indira were working on the digital and physical models in our group, and Amy was the one that collected information, and wrote the plaques. So Amy had all those information in her head to share, meanwhile me and Indira couldn’t go as deep when it comes to presenting. Normally in a exhibition I would write scripts as a presenting guide, but I was running kinda low on time.

To me, this project has been a great learning experience, we had a chance to visit some museums, and deeply studied these sensitive topics that we wouldn’t usually talk about in our daily life. Wish everybody a happy new year, and see you in 2022!