Quotidian Chinese

Abstract

Quotidian Chinese was a series of performances at the Art Gallery of Ontario exploring everyday encounters with the complexities of language, labour, and loss shaped by the Canadian Chinese diaspora. The series engaged my mother, Ming Vong, and sister, Jennifer Vong, and local Chinese seniors as collaborators to revisit experiences of refugee labour in the 80s, language barriers between mother and daughter, and traditional Chinese pastimes, respectively. As participatory and collaborative platforms, Quotidian Chinese was an occasion to confront conflicting cultural and social barriers between mother and daughter, and the self and constructed orientalist ‘other’. At the foundation of these performances are the socio-psychological anxieties that triangulate a history of labour, language, and loss. With specific attention given to the collaborations with my family members, this artist paper engages in an intimate discussion of Quotidian Chinese with my mother and sister held three months after the performances. Our reflections attempt to understand our family dynamic through a maternal intimacy shaped by diasporic conditions.