This work was exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery as part of the "This Place" exhibition-- made possible by the discourses of autobiography, identity, and cultural accommodation/location for intellectual production, storage, and seepage (generally and specifically referred to by the critics and academics as "space").

Like Edward Said whose autobiography is titled "Out of Place" and Milan Kundera who sets the ironic oppositions against the backdrop of homeland politics, this is a work by an émigré artist. And so it says in the VAG guide, "Life in China became increasingly dangerous for him, as he was not only an artist but also a political activist. In 1989, when he was forced to flee China because of his participation in the China/Avant Garde show in Beijing and the Tiananmen Square, he returned to Banff."

Inside the exhibition space, three large red canvases like the one you see here are lined up in a row, filling up the wall. The characters are large, the script cursive, and the text size varied to demonstrate calligraphic passion like those on the da-zi-bao of the Cultural Revolution. But whereas the socialist manifestoes of the da-zi-bao were written in horizontal lines that read from left to right, the self declaration of true artistic realization appear in vertical columns of black ink on red paper like a new year's door scroll with festive gold accent. Such identifiable concepts of literati and folk tradition are to serve as the frame (context) and pillar (support) that uphold the tension between home and diaspora, nostos and mobility, survival and success…. And on this contrived and over-burdened set, the East meets West intellectual drama gets staged again for the international audience who may not be equipped with the skills to decipher the text but could recognize with ease that the large characters on the red are Chinese and the fine scripts on the gold foil are English. By proportion, the Chinese characters gain dominance on the hierarchy of size. Meanwhile, English gets foregrounded by being superimposed on the patches of gold.

Interaction along axes X, Y, and Z. Now I think we've got depth.

They say that those who studied abroad are gilded. I always hated that metaphor. Probably because I gleaned from it the privileges of immigrant status. Unwilling to give credit to either culture and refusing to claim amalgamation of the best of both worlds, I strive for something non-substantial, non-material, something non-physical. I wield the authority of dual perspective, believing that its experiential constitution makes it a skill, a stance, something dynamic that cannot be rubbed off or plated on.