From China, To Canada I-II By Annie TZ Lafrance — *From China, To Canada I-II* By Annie TZ Lafrance

The Chinatown Biennial at Whippersnapper Gallery By Anne Chen and Annie TZ Lafrance

Sept 21, 2021-Oct 21, 2021

The Chinatown Biennial has been exhibiting on sidewalks, benches, lampposts, storefronts, and now at Whippersnapper. We bring together two artists, Anne Chen and Annie TZ Lafrance, who are invested in the realness of forgeries. Anne Chen's work was born out of a request, when her dad asked her to catalog his Chinese art collection. Knowing very little about Chinese art, she declined. As she mulled over his request, she wondered if her response came from insecurity about researching art history or anxiety about detangling familial trauma. So, when he asked me to catalog his Chinese art collection- she flinched. In the past year she has been making these hard things soft; she has made a small knock-off collection of soft sculptures, reproductions of functional and decorative objects from my dad’s collection.

Annie TZ Lafrance's dyptique From China, To Canada represents a romanticized dream she holds onto and wishes to preserve even when the expectations are not met after moving to another location. This long panoramic scene divided in two raises the lack of knowledge she has about both her native and host countries. Inspired from traditional Chinese scrolls and calendars, the hybrid design offers a singular input on the ongoing adaptation required to learn about her native culture from a westerner point of view. With humbleness, this piece also raises the desire to take the time to deconstruct an idealized land in order to thoroughly understand it once reconstructed.

About the Artists:

Anne Chen is a Pittsburgh based teaching artist who makes things that you can touch. She works with fabric, clay, and craft to amuse you and confuse you. Her playful creations reinterpret the objects of her Chinese-American upbringing, adopting strategies of copying, collecting, bootlegging, and ripping to reimagine the ordinary as absurd. In addition to her sculpture, she works as a teacher bringing the same notions of challenging authenticity and disobeying to an energetic, collaborative, and tactile pedagogy which encourages participants to examine their own identities, biases, and learning styles.

Annie Tong Zhou Lafrance is a Chinese-born multidisciplinary artist currently based between Tiohtià:ke/Montreal and Quebec City. In spring, she will obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Concordia University with a major in Studio Art and a minor in Chinese Language and Culture. Her current visual research focuses on the different methods of display enabling the transportability of intimate belongings from one location to another. Both artists' work will be visible from the window front. The Chinatown Biennial hosts (Arezu and Florence) will be holding office hours every Tuesday from 4-6pm (TBC)

About the Chinatown Biennial: The large-scale, international events of biennials have their historical roots in the 19th and 20th centuries’ World Fairs, hosted by colonial empires that demonstrated the reach of their annexing powers and wealth. Similarly, they are now synonymous with art world establishment, status, and multinational sponsorship. By using the prized label of a “biennial,” we want to question for whom we reserve such titles. We will do so by drawing on a legacy of institutional critique that involves the creation of alternatives, both through playful mimicry and transformative reimaginings. The Chinatown Biennial is part actual biennial and part parody.