Making Space: Asian Heritage Month
Join us for a special program on this year's themes of Sustainability and Wellness for this year's International Museum Day on May 18th.
Since 2002, the City of Vancouver has acknowledged and celebrated Asian Heritage Month in May. “Asian Heritage” is a term meant to capture a multitude of ethnic experiences and cultural identities in Vancouver. What does it mean to designate an entire month to the celebration of these various identities? What possibilities does it open for social justice – and where, if any, are its potential limits to this work?
From 2020-2023, the Museum of Vancouver had the privilege of hosting the exhibition “A Seat at the Table”. Now travelling to Cumberland, B.C. and launching in summer 2023, this exhibition celebrates Chinese Canadian Heritage identities and experiences through the lens of food and restaurant culture. In this “Making Space” event, we ask what we have learned from the exhibition, and how we can continue to work with Asian Canadian Communities in the future. In the context of curatorial practices and beyond, how can cultural institutions intentionally make space for the responsibilities and reciprocities of representation?
Join us in learning from four individuals and activists who are working for their communities in mindful and intersectional ways through cultural food justice. Guest Speaker Dr. Amanda R. Cheong from UBC’s Department of Sociology will be giving a brief presentation at the beginning. The panel will be moderated by Bill Yuen from Heritage Vancouver Society – an organization that centers heritage on people and their ways of living, and the meanings they connect to place. This program is in partnership with and supported by the UBC Public Humanities Hub – a UBC initiative with a mandate to help facilitate reciprocity between communities and institutions.
Register early as space is limited. Light refreshments will be served. Masks, while not mandatory, are recommended.
Date: Thursday, May 18, 2023
Time: Doors open at 6pm. Event from 6:30-8:30pm
Tickets: Sliding Scale, $10-30 (A service fee, processing fee and GST is also applied to ticket sales)
If you are having trouble using the embedded form above, please try to reserve your ticket directly on Eventbrite here.
For general inquiries regarding this event, please contact the Programming Department here.
Guest Speaker:
Amanda R. Cheong
Dr. Amanda R. Cheong Is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her research examines the links between legal status and the reproduction of inequality, with a focus on undocumented migrants, stateless persons, and refugees. Learn more about her work, teaching, and publications here.
Meet your Moderator:
Bill Yuen
Bill Yuen is the Executive Director of Heritage Vancouver Society. Bill is dedicated to an understanding and practice of heritage that is centered on people and their ways of living and experiencing. He is committed to how diverse public memories, social histories, rituals and meanings of place can be better understood, experienced and appreciated through the environment around us.
Meet your Panelists:
Wendy Au Yeung
Wendy is a settler of Hong Kong-Chinese background. For almost a decade, she has been a neighbour to the Chinese community, families with refugee backgrounds and other folks experiencing marginalization in the Downtown Eastside area through various roles with Servant Partners Canada and other organizations.
She has had the joy of experiencing mutual welcome, friendship and solidarity through gathering with neighbours around the table, community organizing and her grassroots entrepreneurship project, Happy Woman Kitchen. She hopes to see individuals and communities transformed towards greater connectedness, wholeness and justice through empowering her neighbours, nurturing diverse community and bridge-building through food and cooking.
Anne Claire Baguio
Anne Claire Baguio is a Cebuana settler immigrant who grew up in so-called Vancouver. She is a co-founder of Sliced Mango Collective, a youth collective committed to providing a space for Filipinx-Canadian youth to explore their heritage and culture. Claire has great interest in stories—the ones we share and the ones we create. Her own written pieces are informed by her Filipino heritage, folklore and family legends, and her childhood growing up in East Van. Most notably, “The Gifts of the Mango Tree” is a speculative short story taking place in the Joyce-Collingwood neighbourhood published in Augur Magazine Issue 4.2.
Jag Nagra
Jag Nagra is a queer visual artist who is passionate about community development and ending the stigma against LGBTQ+ people within the South Asian community. She focuses her art practice on concepts that depict a sense of confidence and fearlessness—she unapologetically celebrates darker skin tones and South Asian garments and motifs.
She has collaborated with organizations such as the Vancouver Canucks to make art for their very first Diwali jerseys which gained international attention. She has also created artwork for Tim Hortons, Microsoft and Tumblr and has had numerous public artworks on display throughout Metro-Vancouver that honour her heritage. She has been featured in the multi-award winning internationally acclaimed LGBTQ+ documentary Emergence: Out of the Shadows, and is currently serving as the Vice Chair of Vancouver’s Punjabi Market Collective.
Through art, she has found her voice and a new appreciation for her culture and identity.
Miki Konishi
Miki Konishi is a mixed, nisei Japanese-American who grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. From a young age, he has been involved in the Japanese community through cultural and educational practices such as kendo and Japanese Saturday school. He became more involved in social justice advocacy beginning in college, where he co-founded MULTI, a student organization for multiracial and multiethnic students, while completing his BA in Critical Theory and Social Justice at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. After college, Miki moved to Miyazaki prefecture in Japan to teach English to elementary and junior high school students for two years.
Following his time in Japan, he moved to Washington state where he worked as an Admission Officer for Whitman College and remotely as an Assistant Teacher for the Japanese Saturday school he attended as a kid. Miki is a recent settler to the unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations and is grateful for the stewards of these lands who have been here since time immemorial.
