KPU ceramics exhibit at
Historic Joy Kogawa House
1450 West 64th Avenue
Vancouver, BC V6P 2N4
KPU and the Historic Joy Kogawa House
What began as an assignment in Greg Chan's ENGL 2301 English class in the fall of 2019 developed into a partnership with Ying-Yueh Chuang's Fine Arts students that became a gallery exhibit in the KPU Library, and finally a portion of that exhibit becoming a permanent installation at the Historic Joy Kogawa House in the Marpole neighbourhood of Vancouver
KPU Hands-on Learning
This optional assignment had Chan's Canadian literature students studying one of four works of Canadian literature — Joy Kogawa's Obasan, Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes, Sharon Pollack's The Komagata Maru Incident, and Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony — pair up with a Fine Arts student to create an art piece that brought a key symbol from the novel to life. While the English students analyzed the meaning of each symbol and wrote explications, their Fine Arts counterparts created the physical object.
Maple-Washing: A Disruption, an art exhibit showcasing 16 works, including five inspired by Obasan, ran from December 19, 2019 to January 24, 2020. The launch event was attended by special guests from the Historic Joy Kogawa House and university community.
Maple-Washing: A Disruption
This interdisciplinary Arts collaboration was then exhibited in the atrium of the KPU Library. Titled Maple-Washing: A Disruption, this exhibit featured the collaborative displays created by English 2301: Canadian Literature students and Fine Arts: Ceramics II, Ceramics III, and Open Studio 4300 students, exploring the theme of Canadian identity from the perspectives and lived experiences of the cultural other.
Serving as the inspiration for the displays were four works of Canadian literature: Joy Kogawa's Obasan, Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes, Sharon Pollack's The Komagata Maru Incident, and Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony.
Those students studying Joy Kogawa's Obasan embarked on a “KPU field trip to the Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver's Marpole neighbourhood, where they were hosted by its executive director, Ann-Marie Metten, its education coordinator, Joan Shigeko Young, and special guest Diana Morita Cole, a Japanese-American citizen who was incarcerated in Idaho's Minidoka Relocation Center in her childhood. The students would find themselves travelling between the classroom, ceramics studio and Historic Joy Kogawa House throughout the semester.
The Maple-Washing: A Disruption exhibition, an integration of ceramics and literary analysis, articulates select parts of Canadian colonial history that resist the myth of Canada's multiculturalism: its involvement in the Atlantic slave trade; its refusal of migrant South Asians aboard the Komagata Maru; its internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II; and its discriminatory laws—Head Tax and Exclusion Act—that profiled Chinese Canadians. The 16 displays contest the erasure or sanitization of narratives that document these "maple-washed "incidents in Canadian history.
Participating Students
- Zafer Ahmed
- Sukhjeet Atwal
- Jasmin Chahil
- Celesta De Roo
- Charmaine Anne Detruz
- Dominique Gonzaga
- Helen Hoang
- Kacey Hughes
- Samuel Iarkov
- Kaitlin Kantilas
- Kassidy Kaszonyi
- Sean Kirk
- Yolanda Leung
- Zoe Leung
- Molly Livingston
- Kason Liu
- Murasaki Liu
- Dewina Luechtefeld
- Magan Magan
- Jaskaran Mahil
- Amiel Mendoza
- Shahnaz Mohammadi
- Leila Nicar
- Adeline Ren
- Amiee Risby
- Charayah Romo
- Leah D. Rosehill
- Miranda Russell
- Sharandeep Sandhu
- Kiran Sangha
- Cassandra St. Godard
- Timothy Troupe
- Kelly M. Yorke
Instructors and Curators
- Greg Chan, English
- Ying-Yueh Chuang, Fine Arts
Sponsors
- Alan Davis, President and Vice-Chancellor
- Diane Purvey, Dean of Arts
- Robert Dearle, English Department Chair
KPU Arts ceramics exhibit at the Historic Joy Kogawa House
During the Maple-Washing: A Disruption exhibition, Greg Chan spoke with Ann-Marie Metten, executive director at the Historic Joy Kogawa House, about the possibility of having the Obasan pieces appear at the Historic Joy Kogawa House. With support from the Faculty of Arts, English department, and Office of the President, the five Obasan-themed pieces were endowed to the Historic Joy Kogawa House. Greg Chan, Ying-Yueh Chuang, and student assistant Leah Rosehill installed the pieces in the fall of 2020.
Upon entering the heritage site, Kacey Hughes and Sean Kirk's "Silent Treatment" faces you in the sunroom. Moving into the living room, Leah Rosehill and Molly Livingston's "Kodomo no tame" rests atop the piano; once in the dining room, Charayah Romo and Jaskaran Mahil's "Stony Lives" occupies the dining table; and in Joy's bedroom are Leila Nicar and Kassidy Kaszonyi's "Trembling Bodies" on the windowsill and Murasaki's Liu and Dewina Luechtefeld's "It Is Better to Forget" on the shelf.
KPU is indebted to Historic Joy Kogawa House's Ann-Marie Metten and Joy Kogawa, the inspiration behind the entire project. For more information on this exhibition, please contact Greg Chan at greg.chan@kpu.ca.