here-there listening room
June 16 – July 17, 2022

Is there a point where you can feel like you’ve done your due diligence to learn everything about your heritage? How do you reconnect with your culture and identity in moments when you feel too Canadian? Where do you consider home?

here-there listening room is a space that invites members of the Asian Canadian diaspora to contemplate these nuanced questions together. A community-driven exhibition, the listening room is centered around nineteen unguided audio stories shared by Asian Canadians across Canada. Each story is inextricably linked to the next, weaving a rich anthology of lived histories and experiences.

The immersive listening experience is supported by an evocative typographic window installation and newspaper takeaways featuring illustrations by Brian Jiang, Thamara Perera, and Lilian Sim. A custom-made communal table by local artist Matthew Wai Yiu Lee will feature prominently in the space.

The listening room is a gathering space for contemplation and conversation. It strives to amplify community voices, reflect the vast and varied experiences of individual community members, facilitate meaningful discussions, and enhance public awareness of the diversity and nuance of the Asian Canadian experience. Visitors are encouraged to sit and listen together.

We invite all interested individuals to visit the listening room and here-there.ca, the experimental archive that inspired this exhibition.

here-there audio archive

Dreamy, fuzzy image in pastel colors, blue, yellow, orange and purple. The image is an abstract closeup of thick curving lines coming in and out of the frame, with circular nodes acting as connection points.

**Public Programming: Food Memory, facilitated by Wandy Cheng**

What is the importance of food in our personal and collective connection to our heritage? What kind of memories does Toronto’s West Chinatown evoke for members of the Asian Canadian diaspora?
This two-hour intergenerational workshop invites elders from Scadding Court Community Centre and young adults from the Asian Canadian diaspora to come together to exchange memories around food. Participants will visualize their unique food memory in Chinatown through various methods, such as collaging, drawing, and colouring.
The workshop will be facilitated in English with a Mandarin-speaking translator. Materials will be provided.
**Dates:** Tuesday, June 28th, 2pm – 4pm or Thursday, June 30th, 2pm – 4pm
**Location:** Scadding Court Community Centre, 707 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON M5T 2W6

Bios

here-there collective (Michelle Kuan, Michelle Lu, Emi Takahashi) is a group of interdisciplinary artists who proudly identify as members of the Asian Canadian diaspora. Their artistic practice decenters the Western principles of art and design, and prioritizes their own cultural knowledge and lived experiences. They regularly collaborate with other BIPOC artists and are deeply committed to creating opportunities for professional artists and arts workers belonging to traditionally marginalized communities. The here-there listening room is a physical manifestation of their inaugural project, here-there.ca, an experimental audio archive.

Wandy Cheng is a multidisciplinary artist from Hong Kong whose work exists in various creative outputs including illustration, ceramics, paper-cut, and public art. She has experience coordinating and facilitating collaborative workshops to bring meaningful, community-engaged installations to life. In recent years, her illustrations can be seen on the streets of Toronto and within pages of international publications. Wandy is the creator and facilitator of Food Memory, the programming component of here-there listening room.

*

This exhibition and its associated programming were produced with the generous funding support of the City of Toronto through Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. They are co-presented with Whippersnapper Gallery.

here-there listening room