Alvis Choi
4 June 2013 to 27 July 2013
Chinatown Community Think Tank (CCTT) turns the storefront space of Whippersnapper Gallery into a social space for the Chinese-speaking community in the Chinatown of downtown Toronto. For two months in this summer, Whippersnapper will become the home base of CCTT, where I engage community members in conversations about a wide range of social, political, and cultural issues that have an impact on their perception and definition of art. With my trilingual language skills (Cantonese, Mandarin and English), dialogues will be carried out and utilized as a bridge between the contemporary art community and the Chinese speaking community.
The project started with the simple question of “how is Whippersnapper’s programming accessible for the Chinese-speaking community in Chinatown?” As a Hongkong-Chinese who’s lived in Toronto for less than two years, I find Anglo-centrism in the city and the art world in general problematic. I genuinely wanted to share my creative practice with the Chinese-speaking community, which I feel strongly connected to. The first time I worked at Whippersnapper Gallery was at Nuit Blanche 2012 where I curated Didier Morelli’s project Walking Through Walls. I was going to invite the Chinese-speaking woman who works at the print shop on Spadina Road to come see the project, but very quickly realized how inaccessible the project could be because of the language barrier and the cultural differences. Since then, I continued to reflect on the incident and the issues that come along, and eventually started a conversation with Maggie Flynn, the director of Whippersnapper, about the potential of engaging this community in an open and accessible way.
CCTT attempts to break through language barrier and art elitism, taking direct actions to engage the Chinese-speaking community in conversations, collectively envisioning the role of art in the neighborhood and among this community. We will touch on themes of home, migration, race, family, language barrier, and survival. These topics serve as an entry point to open up discussions about the role of art as it relates to everyday life in this community.
My projects address issues of racism, Anglo-centrism and exploitation of labor. Besides inviting passers-by into the gallery, there will also be a series of outreach activities, including visiting the businesses in Chinatown and facilitating physical “chat rooms” in public spaces.
The set up of CCTT will evolve throughout the months. Notes and visuals will serve as evidence of the interactions. Materials produced will be collected into a set of publications that document the process of the project, mapping out a network of thoughts generated by individuals in the community, and serve as a platform for experimentation of insights gained from this political yet personal endeavor.
In March 2013, I conducted a self-directed residency “Coming Out for Dummies -Chinese Family Edition” within the context of Whippersnapper’s Discussion Den Series. As I came out as queer in the semi-public space of the Gallery, I sought advice from Chinese speaking folks on coming out to my parents back home. The project familiarized myself with the traffic of the gallery, and vice versa, allowing me to engage the community in a much deeper level.
— Alvis Choi
*This project is supported by the Neighbourhood Arts Network BMO Seeds Fund.
Artist Bio
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Alvis Choi/Parsley is the founder of Fantasy is Reality Unlimited (FiRU). Their previous projects Recycling Love (2011), How To Do Gay in Canada — A Survival Kit for Chinese Lesbian Newcomers (2012), PWYC (2012), and Coming Out for Dummies, Chinese Family Edition (2013) were presented at Blue Lotus Gallery, Radical Queer Semaine, Glamboree, Meow Mix, RATS 9 Gallery, Whippersnappper Gallery, The Contemporary Urgencies of Audre Lorde’s Legacy, Jane’s Walk, and the HTMlles10 Festival. Alvis’ ongoing research focuses on identity issues relating to race and sexuality, migration, safe space and open discourse, and fantastical realities. They are currently developing a walking tour of Chinatown for the SummerWorks Festival 2013 as part of the Live Art Series.
Alvis also works as an independent curator and project manager. They are on the Programming Committee of Reel Asian Film Festival (Toronto) and the working collective of Whippersnapper Gallery (Toronto). Previously Alvis served as Assistant Manager of Videotage (Hong Kong). Their curatorial work was presented at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche 2012 and travelled to festivals in Seoul, Cardiff, Beirut, Riga, Arad, Szczecin, Tallinn, and St. Petersburg. Their recent project Queers Can’t Wait, featuring queer artists from Toronto and Montreal, was presented at the 12th Seoul International New Media Festival and the Coming Societee in Hong Kong. Alvis is a member of SYNAPSE – The International Curators’ Network at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) and a recipient of Vtape’s Fellowship of the Curatorial Incubator Program. Their review on Artivistic’s solo exhibition at Centre SKOL (Montreal) was shortlisted by C Magazine’s C New Critic Competition. Their commissioned essay on Morgan Wong’s work is published by Verlag fur moderne Kunst in Hong Kong Artists / 20 Portraits.
