From the nineteenth century onwards, the conditions of economic and political survival for Cantonese migrants were tied to their labour. Their citizenship was conditional upon assimilationist respectability politics of patriotism, “hard work,” and normative white middle-class femininity, masculinity and sexuality. Hence, queerness and failure (or queerness as failure) in the Cantonese diaspora inherently threaten hegemonic power structures. My arts-informed research project uses textile installation to question the stoicism of assimilationist imperatives, by holding space for personal & intergenerational failure and cultural loss. As an expansion upon (and critique of) liberal multiculturalism, it seeks to deromanticize Cantonese diasporic experiences and destabilize linear narratives of the self through an autotheoretical approach. By negotiating a refusal of legibility and acknowledging what Sianne Ngai calls ugly feelings, it problematizes labour as the longing for—and futility of—work within Cantonese diaspora, impacted by tradition, family, and queerness.
This body of work was made within the scope of a MFA thesis project. To read the whole thesis dissertation, please click here.
From April—June 2023, some of this work was reprised in a solo exhibition, titled ‘What Academia Has Done to Me,’ at the FOFA Gallery at Concordia University. Beginning with the question, “what do we lose when we describe ourselves?” Lan's work embodies the anxieties that come with identification, often stuck between tokenism and exclusion, confronting scarcity, as well as raced and gendered expectations of labour. Accompanying the exhibition was Kind of a Collective, a six-week knowledge-sharing project tackling issues of creative labour, sustainability, boundaries, funding, led by artists, curators, and cultural workers. This program functioned as a complementary antithesis to the anxieties and questions asked by the show’s artwork. To read the publication that came out of the exhibition and Kind of a Collective program, click here.
Much of this work was made possible with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
"Did you know your grandmother did this?"
Fresh clementines in netted bag, dried clementine peels, pestle, mortar and ground clementines
Variable installation
2019
A Labour of Labour
hand embroidery polyester thread on found comforter
7’ x 10’
2018
A Labour of Labour (detail)
i work hard, but
LED wire lights, metal wire and tape
12” x 36”
2018
transcript of the embroidered text:
Panel 1: my dad once saw me sewing and told me // that’s not how you finish a knot
Panel 2: Who taught you how to sew, dad? My mother // Did you ever use your skills for anything? // Nothing really. There was a point where we made stuff at home, because we were poor. //
Panel 3: Why didn’t you teach me how to sew? It's not that hard. It's a basic skill you could learn on your own in a few hours... Did you want me to show you? // Yeah, I feel like everyone does it differently. // When are you going to come back? // I don’t know.
Please Reply II
Hand-embroidered thread on cotton voile,
2019
Whitewashed
vinyl on found garment bag with white brocade scarf inside,
2018
Please Reply III
Hand-embroidered thread on cotton voile,
2019
Please Reply I
Video of the fabric pages being flipped: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bur_5IDAKTw/
Installation view of ‘What Academia Has Done to Me’ at the FOFA Gallery, April 2023, photo by Laurence Poirier
Hand-written exhibition text in graphite, installation view of ‘What Academia Has Done to Me’ at the FOFA Gallery, April 2023, photo by Laurence Poirier
Please Reply IV
Installation view of ‘What Academia Has Done to Me’ at the FOFA Gallery, April 2023, photo by Laurence Poirier
Please Reply
installation view of ‘What Academia Has Done to Me’ at the FOFA Gallery, April 2023, photo by Laurence Poirier
Please Reply
installation view of ‘What Academia Has Done to Me’ at the FOFA Gallery, April 2023, photo by Laurence Poirier
Letter size
hand-woven silk thread of two colours on wooden supports
11 x 8.5”
2019
Letter size (detail)
hand-woven silks
