Art, Food & Family Ties: Don Kwan 關日安：尋找我那遺失的美好

English 英 : Beverly Cheng | Chinese 中 : Maggie Ho

Photography: Courtesy of Don Kwan & Ottawa Art Gallery

Don Kwan, Landscape and Loss, Artist with Lantern, 2022, light box (photographic backlit image on Mylar), courtesy of the artist.

T his year marks a major milestone in artist Don Kwan’s family: they will be celebrating their 100th anniversary since settling in Canada back in November of 1922. One of 8 children, Kwan is part of the third generation of his family and a proud descendant of his paternal grandfather who immigrated to Canada at just 11 years of age. Part of the first wave of Chinese immigrants, his grandfather was affected by the discriminatory Chinese Immigration Act that would charge every Chinese newcomer a $50 head tax (an incredible sum in the 1920s). Like so many of that generation, his grandfather would later go back to China to marry and have children there before his family could fully emigrate to Canada after the Second World War.

Don Kwan, Landscape and Loss, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, 2022, 8 photographs on archival cotton rag, courtesy of the artist. Installation view, Don Kwan: Landscape, Loss and Legacy, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2022. Photo: Justin Wonnacott 

His family opened the Shanghai Restaurant on Somerset Street West in Ottawa – which quickly became a staple in the neighbourhood and would go on to not only support the livelihood of multiple generations of their family, but to help many in the community as well. Not unusually, his grandparents and parents faced discrimination in their new home country and struggled to stay afloat. “During my upbringing, my parents always tried to instill where we were from, but also make us appreciate where we are. We came from the blood of poverty and difficult times.” Kwan often recalls his parent’s back-breaking work ethic which would have them work at all hours of the night to prepare food for the next day. It was something that they took pride in and instilled in their children, even if the wages earned from the restaurant were meagre.

While Kwan often worked at his family’s restaurant growing up as a student, he pursued his studies in art, graduating from Ontario College of Art (OCAD) in 1994 and the Ottawa School of Art in 1997. He has exhibited across Canada, including group shows at the Ottawa Art Gallery earlier this year, as well as The Royal Ontario Museum and The Royal Alberta Museum in 2021. His mixed media works often combine ready-made materials that embody Chinese-Canadian culture, designed to engage people in broader conversations about identity and belonging.

迷彩福祿壽雕像、外賣餐牌縫合的背心、暗藏加拿大地圖的紅包拼貼西裝外套……乍看之下，視覺藝術家關日安 (Don)的作品好玩又充滿矛盾；細味其中，你會發現每件創作都是藝術家對自身文化的探索。

Don是第三代加拿大華人，出生及成長於渥太華，父母在當地唐人街經營中餐館。畢業後因為爸爸中風行動不便，家中八兄弟姊妹一起接手餐館工作，令Don接近25年沒有發表過任何藝術創作。然而，這些年的體會、觀察，都一一累積成他日後的創作靈感。

Dress Shirt, Invisible Identites. Photogrpahy: Sam Shem, Vanvouver Chinatown Foundation

Lai See Suit. Photogrpahy: Sam Shem, Vanvouver Chinatown Foundation

In Kwan’s exhibition Landscape, Loss, and Legacy, the artist explored the notions of inclusion and exclusion through family stories. For the installation titled This land is my land, this land is your land, Kwan ties together multiple Muskoka Chairs into a tight, impenetrable circle. The piece alludes to notions of “white wilderness” represented by the popular chairs and questions who is allowed into the inner circles and who is kept outside. He draws in numerous Canadian cultural references, intermixing them with his own family stories to ultimately question: What does it look like to belong in the Canadian landscape?

Growing up as a gay Chinese man in Ottawa, Kwan distinctly remembered a time when he was 12 years old that the Chinese United Christian Church his family belonged to were divided on the topic of gay marriage. “That was a sign for me that being queer was seen as something bad in the Chinese community as well as the Church,” says Kwan. Despite this, Kwan came out to his father, and later his entire family and community at the age of 16. He was surprised by how accepting his parents were — although they didn’t openly approach the subject, his father merely said that he didn’t care what he was and was content knowing his son was happy.

Vest, Invisible Identities. Photogrpahy: Sam Shem, Vanvouver Chinatown Foundation

在餐館長大的Don，見慣父母辛勞工作：「每日工作17、18小時，早上三、四點便要準備做菜、包餃子，功夫多得很！但同樣的食材做出來的食物，在其他餐廳中收費卻是天淵之別。」中餐館營生之困難，令Don反思生活。「爸爸媽媽那一代經歷過貧窮、飢餓，他們勤儉刻苦，原是因為生活迫人，別無選擇，但到了我們這一代應該可以做多一點。」第三代移民、同性戀者的身份，令Don對相關議題特別關注。 「現今社會對同性戀、性別問題相對開明，但在種族文化上偏見及歧視卻停滯不前。1922年，我的祖父來到加拿大，當年他只得十一歲，卻要繳付500元的人頭稅。100年後的今日，社會上不平等、種族仇恨等事情仍然存在。」Don自覺有必要作出改變。他和同樣從事創意工作的哥哥，表演藝術家China Doll，透過改革餐館團結區內社群。「從小我便見證唐人街內社群互助的精神。小時候，爸爸媽媽利用餐館接濟有需要的朋友，提供工作機會令他們可以自力更生。」延續傳統，革新後的餐館不定期舉行華裔聯誼、同志派對及各種藝術文化活動，又夥同其他商店及團體籌辦China Town Remix藝術節、唐人街導賞團。

Luckily Kwan wasn’t alone. His brother Edward became a drag queen whose stage name is “China Doll” and is described by his younger brother as “flamboyant, rebellious and a bad influence!” Years later, they would team up to transform their family’s traditional Chinese restaurant into a place that celebrated all community. For Kwan, his childhood was inseparable from the simple restaurant their parents had started in Ottawa’s Chinatown — while their classmates went to summer camps and holiday, his whole family spent their summers working at the restaurant. When the time came for the Kwan brothers to take over the restaurant, they wanted to transform it into something more than the traditional Chinese-Canadian restaurant of their youth. 

A restaurant by day, the venue became a creative community hub, staging art exhibitions, musical performances as well as a gathering space for Chinese Canadian youth, BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+ communities. Between 2008 - 2021, their annual Chinatown Remixed Arts Festival featured events that connected art, culture, queer and BIPOC communities. “We knew what it was like to be invisible and not have your voice heard, so we connected with others that felt the same to amplify their groups,” recalls Kwan. “With Chinatown Remixed, I saw how art can build bridges and cross barriers of language and culture.”

Running the restaurant took up most of Kwan’s time so, for a time, he took a break from art. However, he remained a passionate advocate for local artists, curating shows for both underrepresented, emerging artists as well as for bigger names. Kwan curated a solo exhibition for his long-time idol, multi-media artist Paul Wong and hosted his afterparty at the restaurant after he won The Governor General Award in 2005. “I grew up going to galleries and museums, but never saw myself reflected nor represented. Then, I went to the National Gallery around 1988 and I saw a piece by Paul Wong. It really resonated with me because I saw an Asian artist’s name.” Fast forward to now: in August 2022, Kwan will be exhibiting alongside Wong in an exhibition at the Doctor Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver. Kwan’s exhibition entitled Beyond Exclusion includes a men’s suit jacket delicately crafted from Chinese red pockets, each enveloping a small map of Canada. The work represents the journey that transgender men must go through to come out to their traditional Chinese communities, and alludes to the strong suits of armour they wear on the outside to protect themselves. He will also be doing an accompanying performance called Altering the Flow of Exclusion.

​​因疫情重拾創作

2020年疫情的出現，煞停了餐館的活動和工作。在休息期間，Don重新投入藝術創作。「媽媽是疫情前一年離世的。她離開後的第二天，我們兄弟姊妹盡責地回到餐館如常工作，無暇處理

傷痛。直至因為疫情而停下來，多年來積壓下來的情緒一下子湧現，我便決定返回工作室埋首創作。」

Honour and Cultural Camo. Photogrpahy: Sam Shem, Vanvouver Chinatown Foundation

Don喜歡利用收集得來的現成物、舊物，加上自己的想像，進行二次創作。以受邀參與皇家安大略博物館《Unmasking the Pandemic: From Personal Protection to Personal Expression》展覽的一系列作品為例，透過不同物料設計口罩，抒發在疫症期間的百感交集的心情：外賣紙袋經拆解後製成的口罩，喻意堂食被禁的社會現象；外賣餐牌編織成的口罩，令人想起面臨結業的餐館食肆行業；華人傳統用作祭祀的玉扣紙，再印上父母的舊照片，滿載對雙親的無盡思念。藝術源於生活，Don透過創作探索個人家族歷史，將那些被遺忘、忽略、快將消失的事物重新演繹；邀請大眾在欣賞藝術品的同時，一同發掘源遠流長的華人生活及文化底蘊。

Presently, Kwan resides outside of Ottawa with his husband and is experiencing a renewed momentum towards creating new projects. Kwan lost both of his parents before the onset of the pandemic and then the restaurant was closed down due to COVID-19 restrictions. Fuelled by the loss during such a dark time in his life, Kwan turned inward and began creating art again, as an outlet of expression. As part of an open call for artists to contribute to #MyPandemicStory, a group exhibition at The ROM in October 2021, Kwan created two pandemic masks entitled Veneration Mask for Mother and Father, and Chinese Take Out Mask. 

As he grew up, Kwan saw many Chinese businesses shuttered around them as younger generations became more educated and took on better jobs, abandoning their family businesses and moving away from Chinatown. “I want people to know that there’s value to our culture and to our heritage,” he says. "There’s a sense of erasure especially because large institutions don’t value these stories. I want to capture the stories in artworks before they’re erased so that we can share what’s very important to our histories.”

SPonsored by FERRIS WHEEL PRESS

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