Chinese Whispers and Other Stories
About the exhibition
Bringing together four emerging female artists of Chinese descent, this exhibition seeks to reveal the complex and shifting nature of cultural difference, identity and migrant stories in ‘multicultural’ Australia. Featuring interstate photo-based artists Pia Johnson, Tammy Law, Janelle Low and Siying Zhou.
The photographic media works negotiate notions of identity, racial discrimination and stereotyping, as well as reimagine the spaces we live in, what makes cultural differences and how it contributes to the narrative of a wider Australian identity.
Curators Statement
Chinese Whispers and Other Stories is an exhibition that brings together four artists, all female, all with Chinese heritage living in Australia. Through photography and video, the works of Tammy Law, Janelle Low and Siying Zhou alongside my own works explore different perspectives into contemporary issues of
cultural identity, migration and belonging in Australia today.
Each artist’s work negotiates notions of cultural identity, racial discrimination and stereotyping, as well as reimagines the spaces we live in within a wider context of mass movement and migration across the globe, and the countless people who live ‘in-between’ places.
The impetus to curate this exhibition was to provide a space where these voices, stories and experiences could be shared. As a female artist with a mixed cultural background, I feel that it is important and critical to present these perspectives in our globalized world – where identities: local, national and multinational are more connected, more pronounced and more defined by political and cultural questions and tensions.
Through the lens of Chinese Whispers and Other Stories we reflect on the subtle and shifting identities of the 21st century, the dichotomy of East and West, and how we may understand who we are and the places we inhabit.
Public Program
In conversation event with Pia Johnson, Siying Zhou and Mikala Tai, Director of 4A Centre of Contemporary Asian Art. Exploring Chinese-Australian contemporary art and the female perspective.
Sunday 21 May 2017.
Listen in here.