Gloria Wong - sik teng mm sik gong (pardon my Chinese)
For many children of first or second generation Chinese immigrants, “sik teng mm sik gong” or “pardon my Chinese”, is a familiar phrase which embodies the Cantonese diasporic experience. This in-between of identity– in which language and understanding clash and intersect– is at the heart of Gloria Wong’s photographic practice. Born and raised in Vancouver, Gloria is a curator, visual artist, and daughter of two immigrants to Canada from Hong Kong. Exploring the intimate themes of migration and family history, Gloria’s most recent work sik teng mm sik gong (pardon my Chinese) gives a voice to a cultural identity which many may have no language for, and speaks to the deep complexities and nuances of East Asian diasporic identities.
We talk with Gloria about her project while she sits in her makeshift “bedroom studio” in Vancouver. When covid-lockdowns started in March, Gloria explains her abrupt move from grad studio to bedroom closet; her prints and negatives are now scattered in every corner of her room. However, as sik teng mm sik gong realizes the detail in everyday mundane surfaces, one can’t help but imagine the beauty that could be noticed within Gloria’s lockdown clutter.
- Alexa Fahlman
Continue below for our interview with Gloria and her full series!
How have you been coping amidst the global turmoil and pandemic?
G: It’s been a strange season for sure. I graduated from Emily Carr just at the start of the pandemic so it’s been weird trying to navigate post-grad in the midst of all of this, I definitely feel like any creativity was “on hold” for a while and I’m just starting to get back into it now.
It’s been interesting to reconsider my work within this context though. Although most of my images are situated within household spaces, I found that being at home during the covid lockdown kind of stalled any impulses to photograph for me as the setting of home was kind of forced upon me rather than by choice.
Your photos show immaculate detail and care. In so many of your photographs–whether it’s the stillness of laundry hanging in the washroom, or the fresh pears wrapped in cushioning foam–you’re able to capture a collective, diasporic identity made entirely out of household effects. Could you speak more on the peculiarities of this?
G: Someone’s home is usually one of the most intimate places that you could photograph as every corner has the ability to reveal so many hidden details about a person and their life. Much of my diasporic experience has been mediated through the home and my relationship to my own family and so in trying to create photographs that could speak to a “Hong-Kong-Canadian” identity, I often found myself returning back to the domestic space as a site for that. The family home was often the one place for me where these two seemingly different, disparate cultures converged. A number of these photographs depict familiar, household effects situated in ways that I remember from my childhood, from my grandmother’s nylon socks that have been worn through to the hanging of laundry. In photographing these objects, I was aiming to find things that could speak to this “in-between” and the intersection of both of these identities rather than just one or the other. Although these items might seem ordinary or everyday, the different nuances in them speak to my complicated cultural identity.
Now more than ever, contemporary photographers seem to be drawn to documenting ordinary or mundane objects that seemed to resonate meaning, whatever their context may be. Do you think that this is becoming a new way of communicating? What is it about the mundane that draws us in so deeply?
G: I think that photographing the everyday has become a new way of connecting, not just for photographers but people in general. Documenting the everyday or mundane is something that has been very present from the very start of photography but it has probably been heightened even more so now with the current accessibility of the medium. Photographs of the most basic and ordinary aspects of our environments are shared so much online now too that it has made us realize how universal some of these objects and settings are despite maybe existing in different contexts.
I think the everyday holds a lot of possibility for image making as there is so much potential to imbue these seemingly insignificant objects with meaning. Some of my earliest influences were photographers like Stephen Shore and William Eggleston who were able to create incredible images out of very ordinary moments and places. There’s something really fascinating about how even the most generic objects can contain some measure of beauty worth photographing. It’ll be interesting to see if this interest in photographing the mundane continues after the pandemic or if staying at home or in quarantine has turned people’s interest away from the everyday and towards more dramatic or sensational scenes.
How has photography helped you navigate your cultural experience?
G: My images are, in a way, an attempt to create a sort of “family album” and archive that has been lost through the process of migration. Growing up, I often tried to dissociate myself as much as I could from anything that was related to Hong Kong and so in photographing these same things that I tried to distance myself from, I’ve been able to reconcile these two identities for myself. Photography also gives me a language to express my feelings around my identity that I’m not sure how to express through words, standing in for things that might feel unspeakable. The medium acts as a way for me to process my own experiences in the diaspora and find the different intersections of these two cultures. Making images of my own family and home has allowed me to create a space where I can be comfortable in the liminality and “in-between.”
Could you tell us more about your creative process?
G: My creative process is quite slow actually, I probably spend more time reading and researching than I do actually making an image. A lot of my research just starts with having conversations with people with similar backgrounds or experiences to my own, finding the similarities and differences between those. Using these conversation as a starting point, I’ll often read different essays or books that can fill in gaps and provide context to themes that I’m working with. I also spend a lot of time on my own looking at images by photographers working around topics of identity, family and migration. Although there aren’t that many artists exploring a specifically Hong Kong Canadian diasporic identity, I find that this type of research is important in helping me understand where my work is situated within contemporary photography.
While I usually have an imagine planned out in my mind before I take it, I also try and stay open to any ideas that emerge in the process of making it. The nature of the 4x5 camera and the very slow process of it also means that I spend a lot of time setting up for the shot, allowing for a comfortability to develop between myself and my subject.
To finish things off, do you have any upcoming projects we can keep an eye out for? Are you planning to stay based out of Vancouver for the next little while or will your future plans take you elsewhere?
G: Im hoping to expand sik teng mm sik gong (pardon my Chinese) outside of my immediate family and make it into a phonebook soon. I’m also planning on finishing a project in Hong Kong when it’s safe to do so as the rest of my family is in the process of immigrating over to Vancouver. I would love to be able to document the transitional nature of their spaces there during this as well as the places they are moving to here. Im also hoping to do my MFA at one point in the next few years, maybe in Europe, but I’ll be based out of Vancouver for the next little while at least!
