Burnaby Art Gallery Presents ANNA WONG: TRAVELLER ON TWO ROADS Exhibit Preview

The Burnaby Art Gallery will present Anna Wong: Traveller on Two Roads from August 31–November 3, 2018, a retrospective of master printmaker Anna Wong (1930–2013). Wong is a Chinese-Canadian artist born and raised in Vancouver’s Chinatown, whose international career spanned seven decades.

Examining Wong’s life between the West Coast of Canada and New York City, as well as extensive travel throughout China, this exhibition features over 70 original artworks, including a wide range of paintings, hand-pulled prints and large-scale textile pieces.

“Whether Wong was creating work in the city or in her isolated West Coast studio, she was always working with images in stark contrast from her present surroundings: establishing an ‘elsewhere’ through tableaus of fern and maple leaves while living in Manhattan; or through scenes of the Great Wall and Mount Gongga while making art in Vancouver. These works represent two parallel journeys of the self, and in this exhibition we have attempted to accompany her on these travels,” explain co-curators Ellen van Eijnsbergen and Jennifer Cane.

In her youth, Wong worked at her family’s business, Modernize Tailors, a fixture in Vancouver’s Chinatown neighborhood dating back to 1913. As a young adult, the artist studied Chinese brush painting in Hong Kong, and graduated from the Vancouver School of Art with a degree in creative printmaking. She moved to New York City at the age of thirty-six to continue her studies at the Pratt Graphics Center, where she was quickly offered a teaching position. Over twenty years at Pratt, she taught hundreds of students, returning to Vancouver each summer to teach her own ‘art school’ to a large extended group of nieces and nephews, and to spend time working on her own art in the serenity of her Quadra Island studio.

Influenced by her parents’ blend of Chinese and Western traditions, with a priority placed on cultural and academic education, Wong, the middle child of ten siblings, acted as the matriarch of the family while at the same time, pursued her independence and realized her dream of becoming a professional artist in New York. When Anna’s parents took a year-and-a-half journey around the world in 1951, twenty-one-year-old Anna became the appointed custodian of her younger siblings. This experience solidified her role as an adept listener and family confidant. It was also during this time that Anna developed her interest in teaching art lessons to young children.

According to a Burnaby Art Gallery spokesperson, despite a commendable exhibition record, Wong has remained virtually unknown to Vancouver’s art community. As publication author and art historian Keith Wallace writes, this was due in part to the fact that Wong was not “preoccupied with becoming a ‘career’ artist or in working in service of financial benefit.” In the 1960s, her original prints received several international prizes, and she represented Canada in a number of international print biennials. Her work was featured at the National Art Gallery of China in Beijing in 1979.

This exhibition, organized and circulated by the Burnaby Art Gallery, will be on display at the gallery from August 30–November 3, 2018 before travelling across Canada over 2019–2020.

Public Programs

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 30, 7 pm
Free, everyone welcome

Curator’s Tour: Sunday, September 9, 2 pm
Free, everyone welcome

In the BAG Family Sundays: Sunday, September 16 & October 21, 1–4 pm
Free drop-in, all ages welcome
Gallery visit plus family-friendly art projects.

Culture Days: Multilingual Tours of Anna Wong: Traveller on Two Roads
Saturday, September 29, 1-4pm | Free, everyone welcome
French, Mandarin, Cantonese and English tours.

Panel Discussion: The Art and Life of Anna Wong
Sunday, September 30, 2pm | Free, everyone welcome