Eat, Connect, Remember

Artists consider what it means to be nourished – physically and spiritually.

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Two award-winning Taiwanese Canadian artists known collectively as Mizzonk, who live close to nature on an acreage in Metro Vancouver, join Seattle-based poet and visual artist Jane Wong in the exhibition Nourish. At its core, the show, on view at the Richmond Art Gallery until April 3, considers what it means to be nourished, both physically and spiritually.  

The title raises thoughts of eating and Wong does not disappoint, employing abundant imagery related to food in both her words and art. Her installation, After Preparing the Altar, The Ghosts Feast Feverishly, features a round oversized dining table of the kind typically found in North American Chinese restaurants. It is laden with large bowls, most containing phrases from her poem of the same title. The text says things like: “We comb through berries and come out so blue,” and “Deep fry a cloud so it tastes like bitter gourd or your father leaving.” Clearly, the subject matter extends well beyond eating to emotions, moods and family.

Wong’s family emigrated from China to the United States after suffering through famine during Mao’s Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962. Wong says she spent two years thinking about her forebears so she could write the poem in their collective voices. Gallery visitors must walk around the table to read it all. Above the table, an array of suspended spoons form a whimsical chandelier, adding to the installation’s immersive quality. 

Representations of food, as well as the challenges facing low-income immigrant families, are central to another of Wong’s pieces, The Long Labors. It’s a seven-minute video of Wong making dumplings while reciting a poem that honours the work of immigrants, including her family, who ran a Chinese restaurant in a New Jersey strip mall. “Do you know how long you can hold your urine until your 15-minute break – the rolling pressure in the abdomen,” she recites in the video. “Do you know cuticles peeling white like flecks of cod after washing dishes.” 

Wong hopes the show encourages others “to think about your own lives, your own food histories and memories and how it nourishes you.”

Meanwhile, Mizzonk’s work considers the two decades the duo has lived in seclusion on six acres of land in a remote area of the Lower Mainland. Graduates of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, they were living in New York during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre. It shocked them into changing their lifestyle.

“We had an awakening about how short life is,” says Lin. “Simultaneously, we felt a need to connect with nature.”

Moving to land with a creek and spending time amidst trees, meadows and gardens has provided them with a serene environment for self-reflection and mindfulness. They plan their daily lives around the rhythms of nature. The local ecology is part of their art practice. 

“We aim to connect with the inner self and practice inner development,” says Lin. “We view the self as interconnected with everything else – nature and humans are one.”

Mizzonk’s Six Acres is a two-channel projection of an animation produced from watercolour drawings that Lin began making in 2019.

“We wanted to animate the drawings because nature is never static,” says Lin. “Ideally, we want viewers to feel hugged by these images.” ■

Nourish at the Richmond Art Gallery from Jan. 22 to April 3, 2022.

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