A SENSE OF PLACE: JENNY YUJIA SHI 施雨迦：漂流成長記

English 英 : Melissa Haggerty | Chinese 中 : Maggie Ho
Photography: Courtesy of Jenny Shi

The title of this article is, we must confess, a little misleading.

While the story does indeed have a happy ending and our heroine has finally found her sense of place, the journey to this spot was the opposite experience: it was one of constant displacement.

Halifax-based, multimedia artist Jenny Yujia Shi talks a lot about growing roots. This is probably because her life has been uprooted almost too many times to count. Not surprisingly, much of her creative output centres around themes of displacement and dislocation, which she attributes to two defining moments in her life: the demolition of her childhood neighbourhood in downtown Beijing and then, the decade she spent navigating the immigration process here in Canada.

Shi’s work is as poignant as it is beautiful. Her life story is a perfect fit for the theme of this issue. We sat down with her to discuss her many trips into the unknown, starting at the beginning.

When she was 9 years old, the government ordered her family and all residents out of their centuries-old Hutong neighbourhood. While the area might have appeared dilapidated to some, to her young self it was perfect. “It had a multitude of stories, of intergenerational lived experiences, of textures. There were so many kids, lots of elders – all hanging out on the streets. There were chess clubs, people making food together, congregations around the water taps. It was a very diverse and dynamic place,” she lyricizes. But, still, the entire area was razed; her world erased. All in the name of ‘progress.’ Suddenly, nothing was familiar. Her family moved to a small apartment relatively close by, but many of their friends were forced to go far away. Relocation was devastating to many elders because for so long they had been connected to the ground – she heard that many of them passed away shortly after being forced to leave – “because they were like big trees, being displaced, uprooted from their land.”

She likens the trauma her neighbourhood went through to what she sees happening in Chinatowns across Canada today. “Entire communities are being displaced and the stories are being erased. We must find ways to document them, amplify them through intergenerational connection,” she says with the conviction of someone who has experienced this kind of loss first-hand.

But back to her story. Shortly after moving to their new home and starting to feel settled, her parents sent her off to boarding school. No doubt with the best of intentions for future opportunities and a great education, but it was challenging for a 10-year-old just finding her footing again. Next came another school at 14 – but this one was to prepare her ‘to go to Canada one day.’ Shi shares that she had no idea what ‘a Canada’ was at the time; it was just an abstract word with no context in her insular world.

When it was finally time to start thinking about going to Canada, Shi was older and understood that it was a different country, on the other side of the world. Her teachers and peers told her to apply to the art schools in cities with established Chinese communities, but our heroine had other ideas. Tired of everyone telling her what to do, she decided she was going to Halifax. Where? Yes, Halifax, the home of NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Art & Design). When we asked why there, of all places, she responded: “I decided to come to Nova Scotia because I literally couldn’t find any information about it! That was enticing to me. All I found online was a photo of a painter, perfectly backlit, sitting in front of an 18th century arch.” Turns out, that photo was all it took to make up her mind. “It was a random decision, for sure,” she laughs now, “but it was also a very conscious one.”

視覺藝術家施雨迦(Jenny)自小常年駐外：童年被迫遷、初中離家寄讀、大學畢業後經歷長達十年的居留申請。嘗過孤單、失落與困境，憑衝勁與毅力走出自己的路途。

Jenny成長於中國北京的胡同的老院子裏；十歲那年，滿載歡樂回憶的家園因為城市重建計劃而被迫清拆，小小年紀經歷了人生的第一次遷徙。升上中學後，Jenny對新住處、新學校總感到格格不入。「我的家庭一直鼓勵我在藝術方面的發展，但我升讀的那間中學是北京清華大學的附屬中學，非常重視學科成績，尤其看重數理科，令我感到十分沮喪。」除了追不上學業的進度，Jenny更不適應學校的深嚴規條，加上離家寄讀的孤單，令她再度感受到漂泊的徬徨。

一如大多數的傳統華裔家庭的年青人，Jenny的成長過程，從居住環境、升學等事情，都只能聽從安排；直至在選擇大學時，她決心要改變。「我心底裡極討厭周遭老師等旁人的支配、為我的生命作主，當時只想找個最陌生的地方去逃離束縛。選擇升學NSCAD（諾瓦藝術與設計大學），純粹因為我在網上找不到太多新斯高沙省 (Nova Scotia)的資訊。」儘管這個決定下得有點衝動，至少，那是她自己所作的決定。

Jenny Shi compares the reality of arriving in Canada to the little orange Google Maps figure who gets dropped from outer space onto an arbitrary spot on a map. She was 18. It was cold and damp. No sense of where she was. Her host family made her feel safe and comfortable and were so kind to her. But she was about as far away from home as she could get. Displaced again.

While the school was great, NSCAD itself wasn’t a very diverse place. “It was a bit of a strange environment because if you don’t see people who look like you, you can start to forget yourself.” Some days she felt normal: “Look at me, I’m a young person, out exploring the world,” on others, if she didn’t understand a pop culture reference for example, she felt completely foreign. Feeling out of place yet weirdly wanting to root at the same time. “I didn’t feel like an immigrant because I wasn’t an immigrant. I was an international student, there on a visa,” she explains. Permitted to only stay within the strict dates on her paperwork, knowing that she would have to leave. The little orange Google Maps figure would be picked up and dropped back home one day.

It was in her third year at NSCAD that students were asked to explore their own personal themes. Around the same time, Shi started to think more and more about the connection between her early childhood dislocation and the feelings of vulnerability and impermanence she felt as a temporary resident in Canada. The different kinds of art, techniques and ‘languages’ the school exposed her to allowed her to verbalize and turn those feelings into something tangible. Her voice started to develop. They wanted her to choose between being a painter or becoming a print maker, but ever-the-rebel, she wanted to be both. By mixing the two very different media, she realized she was also combining two cultures; almost collaging the two distinct parts of her life together. “I started to realize I had more than one narrative in me. I was a Chinese youth who had all these other experiences before I came here. My peers hadn’t had the same ones.”

成長的聲音

新斯高沙省屬加拿大面積第二小、大西洋沿岸省份，地區被森林及湖泊所覆蓋，對一般升學或移民人士來說是個較冷門的地點。Jenny形容初到埗的自己：「好像Google地圖上那個小黃人一樣，一下子被掉落在一個陌生的地方。」一方面感到新鮮好奇，渴望接觸新事物：另一方面在靜下來的時間，她總察覺到自己跟周遭的「不同」。經過四年自主的大學生涯，她逐漸探索出屬於自己的創作風格及主題。「我喜歡糅合繪畫、拼貼、平版印刷等不同媒介；這種混合模式的創作方法，呼應着內心的多重的聲音，代表不同角度的自我對話。」

為居留而奔波

校園的豐富生活，幾乎令Jenny錯覺以為自己跟其他同學沒分別。直至快畢業、準備投身社會時，她才驚覺因為缺乏居留身份，對比本土的同學，出路及選擇少很多；而且一旦找不到工作，在限期內便要離境。

申請移民及爭取居留頓成了Jenny畢業後的首要目標。偏偏，因為藝術工作性質特殊，令她的申請特別波折重重。在漫長的申請和等待期間，她將整個過程透過創作記錄下來：以版畫、立體印刷技術展示出斑駁的多元文化痕跡；輪廓模糊的剪影，反映移民的無力及脆弱心情、一個又一個觸目的紅色箭咀取材自出多次出入境時證件上的印章圖案……各種創作元素零散地漂落，集合起來觀看，正好見證移民過程中經歷行行重行行的心路歷程。「我的作品承載了加拿大和中國兩個時空交積而成的人生感悟。畫中人擁有自己的故事，當中的線條、顏色和形狀等組合就像生活中的點滴交錯。觀眾從作品中以另一角度觀看，對照現實，同時為作品増添意義。」

Post-graduation was a different matter altogether. Her student visa allowed her 3 years to find a job and stay in the country. The problem is that foreign art students don’t exactly have people lining up to hire them. Friends started to create custom jobs for her because she needed help – at one point, she was holding down 5 part-time positions at once. The problem was that nothing she was doing ticked any of the standard ‘boxes’ on the immigration forms. She was doing some really interesting things, but nothing met with the paint-by-numbers criteria. For someone searching for permanency in her new country, this only made her feel unvalidated. Misplaced. Her box “unknown.” It was during this time that her artwork started to incorporate the stamps and arrows from her passport and immigration papers. Even her figures bear a striking resemblance to the Google Maps figure. “A stamp, at its core, is a very basic form of printmaking,” she explains. “And the arrows became a vague symbol that represented all the fragmented pieces it took for me to finally land.”

Once she finally submitted all her paperwork, it took close to 2 years to get her Landing Interview. By the time she had been granted Permanent Resident status, she had been in Canada for over a decade. 10 years of uncertainty and insecurity finally started to wane. That huge relief and elation was short lived, however, replaced by a new emotion that caught her completely by surprise: that of grief for her birth country. The realization that that part of her story was truly over.

We told you at the beginning that this story has a happy ending and fear not: we’re getting there. One of the many jobs she held down while awaiting to be “admitted” to this country was working with other immigrants and migrants. These art-focused, community-based organizations allowed her to see that her own experience wasn’t all that different to that of other newcomers. While the lives lived by each immigrant might be varied, the struggles and barriers were the same: accents being judged, voices being erased or altered to meet the mainstream discourse. By sharing what she had learned, she helped guide others through the confounding, frustrating Canadian immigration process. It was then that the most amazing thing started to happen: by helping others navigate the system, her own scars began to heal. She no longer felt like an outsider. She was on the ground, doing important work. She finally belonged. She was starting to grow roots.

We asked if she would continue to feature immigration in her artwork, she replied, “I will probably always incorporate that theme into my work, but I’m branching out – I want to explore other people’s experiences. I am really interested in the voices of the Chinese diaspora here in Nova Scotia; particularly the 18 to 20-year olds who are only just learning who they are. I really hope that, through my artwork, I can help shape safer places for these people. So that they know they can be. That they too can belong.

Welcome home, Jenny Yujia Shi. Welcome home.

2019年，Jenny分別舉行了《Admit One》及《Admit Two》個人展覽，幾何圖形勾劃的人像拼貼於玻璃箱內，寓意沒有居留身份人士所受的種種限制。及後，《This Does Not Authorize Re-Entry》展覽，總結了歷時十年的申請移民的心情，當中以繪畫混合拼貼，透視了北京的童年回憶；亦有含有護照素材、舊照片等組合成的拼貼裝置，回顧了Jenny顛沛流離的歲月。

「當我辦妥landing interview後，在為新生活感到興奮之餘，卻感到淡淡失落，那一刻我才驚覺在真正成為加拿大人的同時，亦意味着自己正式要跟過去告別，即使日後回鄉，那個地方也不再是我的『家』。」移民相關的創作不會因為取得永久居留權而結束，Jenny正繼續探索新生活及新身份，同時擔起傳承的使命，積極參與東岸及新斯高沙省首都哈利法克斯(Halifax)市內的藝術交流及社區藝術活動，將自己的經歷及文化，與當地的新移民、華人、少數族裔及年青藝術家分享，期望他們也可以規劃出自己的路途。

SPonsored by FERRIS WHEEL PRESS

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