Alayne McGregor
The last two years have given Centretown artist Don Kwan a chance to shine.
Kwan has been best known for co-running the Shanghai Restaurant with brother Ed (China Doll). The Somerset Street restaurant, which opened in 1971, was a local landmark both for its food and the art exhibits and shows run there by the brothers. Kwan was also the mover behind Chinatown Remixed, an annual arts festival run from 2008 to 2021, as well as public arts projects in Chinatown.
But this spring, Kwan was given the Peter Honeywell Mid-Career Artist Award by the Ottawa Arts Council (OAC), in recognition of both his own work and the support he has given to Ottawa’s arts community.
The council noted that he has drawn on “his own experiences and challenges of being a gay, third-generation Chinese Canadian artist as a way to ground himself in broader conversations about identity, representations and intergenerational memory-making in the diaspora.”
The Ottawa Art Gallery is also now featuring a major exhibit of Kwan’s work in conversation with classic art from its Firestone Collection. Landscape, Loss, and Legacy will run until next January.
In it, Kwan’s installations and photographs are contrasted with art by A.J. Casson, Lawren Harris, and Harold Town, among others, in a discussion about what belongs in the Canadian landscape.
Chipping away since 1994
Kwan said he felt validated by the OAC award. “I’ve been chipping away. I’ve been part of the art community since 1994 when I started taking over the restaurant from my parents’ and grandparents’ generation.”
He said he draws much of his artistic inspiration from family history, and uses family photographs in his art. His OAG exhibit is about his family’s journey traveling to Canada, “celebrating their stories and highlighting them in the artwork through the use of different media.” This November will be the 100th anniversary of his grandfather’s arrival in 1922, he said.
The lantern holds memories
Central to the OAG exhibit is a Chinese lantern, whose image appears in various forms, both whole and disintegrated.
Originally Kwan inherited a large Chinese lantern from Wong’s Palace Restaurant. He used that as a centrepiece of an exhibit at the Shanghai in 2018 called “Illuminating our ancestors.” in which he replaced the original glass with family photographs. That piece was sold to a collector.
When his parents died in 2019, he took another rosewood lantern, and hung it out in the woods near his studio “to illuminate my dad’s spirit to come back.”
He took the glass panels off to expose it to the harshness of the landscape. “I left the lantern outside in the harshness of winter, the torrential rains of the spring, and then the summer heat.”
It was outside for two years, slowly decaying and becoming “very much like a layered piece of work.” The remnants are displayed in a case in the OAG exhibit. He said he had to scour the ground and take away two years’ worth of leaves to find each piece.
Kwan said the lantern was emblematic of loss but also of strength and resilience.
“It held its colour. The tassels were still a brilliant red although it was falling apart. Every time I would look at the lantern, I would be reminded of my parents passing and then I would reflect upon their journey coming from China to Canada and all the hardships. There was a lot of emotion that I’ve imbued onto that lantern.”
He has also included a new version of the lantern in the exhibit as well as photos of the decayed lantern.
Examining representation
Kwan said he hoped the OAG exhibit would make people think about belonging and what is represented in art. He said he went through the entire 1600-piece Firestone Collection to pick the pieces by other artists in the exhibit, first looking at computer images and background information, and then viewing the actual pieces on his shortlist.
What stood out to him, he said, was the lack of pieces by queer or indigenous people or people of colour: “I saw a real gap there.” He referred to that in the exhibit by including landscapes with no people at all in them, and also included several ink drawings by artists of Asian descent.
Kwan said that his artistic career has exploded in the last two years. He has pieces in three exhibits right now, including at the OAG and the SAW Gallery in Ottawa.
The pandemic shut-down also gave him more time to concentrate on art – starting with creating artwork out of decorated masks, which became very popular.
He also produced a China Doll colouring book, which is available online as a PDF or in print at the OAG store.
Shanghai reopening?
One question Kwan wasn’t willing to answer was when and if the Shanghai might reopen (it closed at the start of the pandemic.) He said he couldn’t speak for his family: “it’s difficult.”
As well, both Ed (China Doll) and he pivoted during COVID-19, and both are still very busy with their alternate careers. “We’re blessed to be able to be able to focus on our artistic practices. They’re both being well-received.”
Kwan has his first exhibit outside Ontario this summer, in the Chinese gardens in Vancouver. He said China Doll was coming with him to Vancouver for the exhibit, and they would do events together there. He will also be reviving a performance where he serves a pot of tea that was made from the ripped-up remnants of his grandfather’s head tax certificate.
“It was very therapeutic for me. Art for me is very healing.”