I wrote the following piece for painting Mid-air (image 1). The painting was selected for the cover of Canon Vol 3. and the writing was published in this issue. Canon is an undergraduate journal at the University of King’s College (Halifax, NS) that focuses on highlighting the voices of marginalized voices in Academia.
In 2009, I moved from Beijing to Halifax on a student visa.
I was 18 at the time, just old enough to understand the significance of moving to a different culture, but naive enough to be undaunted by it.
I once considered myself lucky for not having much of an accent. It made it easy to blend in. I fit in just enough to experience life as if I was an ordinary Canadian youth. My camouflage helped to create the illusion that I wasn’t all that different. Like my peers, I too imagined building a life here: applying for grants, residencies and taking advantage of any opportunity that came my way.
It all changed after graduation. My immigration papers now classified me as a temporary resident. No longer a student, my life in Canada was now on a countdown. As other people went on to pursue the next stage of their lives, I was faced with the pressing matter of how to secure permanent resident status so as to not leave the place in which I had begun to take root.
Since then, my art practice, naturally but involuntarily evolved under the force of the seemingly endless journey towards permanent resident status. Through visual language, I have been making numerous attempts to understand and articulate my experience; one that just doesn’t quite fit into the conventional immigration narratives.
“Mid-air” is an ongoing painting series arose during my flight from Beijing to Halifax in summer 2017. The cabin felt as if it was a crystallization of time and space, embodying displacement, hopefulness, disorientation and longing. Puzzled by where ‘home’ really was, I couldn’t follow the linear direction of my travel. How could I continue where I left off when it was only my body that boarded the plane?
This was when I looked out the windows and started to imagine people from my childhood memory appearing amongst the clouds. These large and monumental figures anchored my existence. At that moment, neither Beijing nor Halifax felt real to me, it was as if the only place I belonged and truly existed was in midair.