![Gradex banner Gradex banner](/Content/images/7/gradex-banner.png)
Faculty of Art
Drawing and Painting
Meet the Artist
Isaak
Fong
Performance
“I use performance and instinct to facilitate my desire for ancestral communication and to connect with family after death. For my thesis, I have worked with my Grandfather's (Fong Fay Kwong or 鄺 惠 光) calligraphic workbook translations of English to Chinese. Faith has been placed in an ancestral pedagogy that is not in blindly copying my Grandfather's written texts but instead actively learning from, as a part of a generational dialogue that seeks to disrupt linear readings of translation that create unequal relationships, where one language (in this case English) is prioritized over the other. This is seen in how translation texts are organized, often through a taxonomy of language (e.g., A-Z, family groups), directionally read, and compared.or, as Paulo Freire describes *this*'In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.'- Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' Pg. 44Wherein 'tangible' (Freire, 50) acts of love, through performance give the words and characters to facilitate a liberation of the language needed for responsible and reciprocal ancestral communication.(profile) Photo Credit: Henry Chan ”
![divider](/content/images/profile/divider-green.png)
Isaak Fong (b.1999) from the prairies and foothills of Alberta, explores familial relationships and instances of the imprecise.
AUArts - Faculty of Art
Drawing
Major Transferred, 2021
Performing Unskilled Labor
2024, Shadows in the Sea
789 Dundas St W
2023, Paraline
Midnight Arcade
2020, Lunch Time 紅鰻魚
The Screen Gallery - AUArts Calgary, AB
2022, Frances Lea Ziegler Memorial Scholarship
OCAD University
2020, Jason Lang Scholarship
Government of Alberta
2019, Jason Lang Scholarship
Government of Alberta
![divider](/content/images/profile/divider-green.png)