Christie Carriere

Jade Shop - Chinatown Mall Project

Jade Shop1 of 3 panels on sewn, un-stretched, hanging canvas scrollfeaturing the owner and her shop in the Chinatown Centre mall, 222 Spadina Ave.(now closed)

“... I was at the same time discovering both the value and the precarity of our communities. And this became the answer to the questions I had posed myself after reading Shraya’s article*. If I refused to make art about the pain and unjust suffering of my communities, I would make it about our joys, our energy, and our relationships, as precarious as they may be. Emphasizing community, emphasizing humanity, would also work to undercut the stereotypes surrounding Asian Canadians/Americans, which often frame us to be technologically advanced yet emotionally and intellectually anachronistic.* At a time when many racialized communities are threatened and targeted for dispersal by the isolating forces of gentrification, the act of painting the people and the spaces we so value became an act of care and an attempt at documentation, perhaps even preservation. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I’ve come to understand that this project was born out of a reaction. A desperate yet delicate grasp towards tenuous links.*Vivek Shraya, “How did the Suffering of Marginalized Artists become so Marketable?” Nowtoronto, 1 May 2019. https://nowtoronto.com/culture/art-and- design/vivek-shraya-trauma-clown/.*Techno Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media, ed.Davis S. Roh, Greta A. Niu, and , and Betsy Huang (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2015).”