Portal
Kim Huynh

Portal is a community voice echoed by the past and the present. The mural consists of various Chinese art works by four Chinese artists from Calgary: Anna Pai, Kwon Wing Cheng, Larry Wong, and myself, plus a combination of 40 images of Chinese artifacts from about 1900, pieced together an old icon of the City of Edmonton, the CN Tower.

This site-specific installation draws from the early settlement of the Asian community in Western Canada, many of whom came to participate in the in the construction of trans-national railways in the late 19th century, and who contributed to everyday society as it continues to do so today. The cultural and economic dynamic of the central Edmonton shares many facets and concerns with the larger Canadian community, while its memory of the early Chinese Canadian history in Alberta is being challenged and made void by new complexity of the meaning of Multiculturalism.

“If we are working in a time when the ground seems to be shifting beneath our feet (as Foucault once suggested), the challenge remains to make creative and usable mappings of the changed terrain and to do what ethnographers have always done: try to find our feet in a strange new world.”
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson in Culture, Power, Place, Place –explorations in critical anthropology, Duke University, 1997,p.26

If “the feet” or the essence of today’s social concern is a necessary focus, my chosen reference for this dialogue is the CN Tower. The majestic landmark of the CN Tower was one of the first architectural designs in Edmonton by Abugov and Sunderland in 1966, and it was considered to be Western Canada tallest building at the height of 364 feet. In this installation at Harcourt House Gallery, the CN Tower is re-represented by an historical form of Chinese art contextualized in an urban technological language. Each tile is like an enlarged pixel and, together, 225 tiles create an old and new cultural symbol that brings together the presence of a social marker with a new mapping of an urbanized Edmonton.

Portal is an intersection of movements and information. It is a resting and subconscious state, which is only recognized by the individual, and it does not rely on the participation of the community. It begins with oneself. It is the deepest being existing within a truthful realization of one’s wholeness. It is a recognition who you are at that moment, which one may or may not choose to reflect in reality.

Contemporary philosophical and psychological theorists insist that memories are constituted of cultural and personal dispositions. Rather than persisting as a fixed record in the mind, memories amount to ‘traces’ or ‘representations’ that link experiences with recollections of those experiences. The philosopher John Sutton, for instance, suggests that “memories are blended, not laid down independently once and for all, and are reconstructed rather than reproduced.” My own fascination on the subject explores the constructive nature of memory and the inevitable gap that takes place between an original experience and later recall.

I am particularly interested in Tony Bennett’s visualization of memory as a palimpsest, as a repository “that retains all impressions yet offer(s) itself constantly as a clean surface upon which new inscriptions [can] be made.” The concept of memory functioning as a palimpsest implies diverse layers beneath the surface, which are at the same time changing and connected. In my opinion this understanding of memory demonstrates a corollary in different media technologies. For example, the photographic process immediately produces a gap between the actual experience and the resulting image. In effect, digital imaging functions in the same way, but since digital representations can be manipulated and modified indefinitely; the relationship between reality and representation can become unstable or even lost.

My research focuses on the combination of digital technology, traditional printmaking and photographic techniques. In each physical layer and virtual manipulation, the remaining image is a record of past processes. As a result, my prints explore states of authenticity and fiction and how they become inseparable during the reconstructive process.

–Kim Huynh

Exhibition date: October 4 – November 3, 2007

gallery   Adrian Cooke   Beth Pederson