Artist calls on his two identities in study of immigrant experience
Pieces examine the balance between cultures and the impact of the pandemic
On one level, Nicholas Tay's art works focus on his experience as an immigrant.
On another, they're also about alienation — a feeling he hopes others can identify with.
“I'm dealing with the Chinese immigrant experience,” he said. “My hope is that the idea of alienation, of not belonging and of finding a way home, is something other people can relate to and feel seen.”
Tay's exhibition, called Amateur Cartography, is upstairs at the Massy Gallery.
The title is an admission that while he's not a professional at making maps, he wants to describe his journey in a way other people can follow.
“Maps are really good for that,” he said. “They're great for providing context, setting place, logging a journey and maybe forecasting a further journey — that's very much what I wanted to do with the series.”
Tay was born in Singapore and came to Canada in 1982 when he was about five years old. He said he fell in love with his new country.
“It was a magical experience,” Tay said. “It felt like home.”
But as he grew up, he began to realize how much he wanted to fit into his new culture. He started thinking of what it meant to constantly navigate between his Chinese `home' and his Canadian `home'. He started thinking about living between two cultures in 2003 during the SARS epidemic and how it was viewed through a western lens. More recent works in the series reflect on his current experiences with COVID-19.
Tay said having two identities has allowed him to have empathy with both sides of situations, whether they're intimate and personal, or wide-ranging and geopolitical. Having two identities, he said, was like having “an emotional resource or toolset to interpret the world and come to terms with it.”
An experience in Los Angeles while attending the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., in the mid-1990s illustrated for him a big difference between the U.S. and Canada.
He and a group — Tay, who is Chinese, along with two Caucasians and a Black friend — were on their way to see the reissue of Star Wars. They were in North Hollywood/ Burbank and they all jaywalked across the street.
“The police officer only pulled over the Black guy to give him a hard time,” Tay said. “I was like: `I'm going to get in there. That's not right.'”
But his friends advised against that.
“`It's not Canada, Nick,'” he was told. “`You have to stay here. We just need to watch and let them know we're close.'”
The incident was a “real awakening” for him about the racialized world in America.
“As a Canadian growing up, it was so shocking to me,” he said. “You start to look inward and start not to take things so much for granted back home in Canada.”
Amateur Cartography continues until May 24 at the Massy Gallery above Massy Books in Vancouver's Chinatown.