Cafeteria #3 was shown in Gu Xiong’s 1994 Richmond Art Gallery exhibition, The Basement. After the exhibition, the Richmond Art Gallery acquired the work for its Permanent Collection. In this work, Xiong revisits his feelings about the reality of being a recent immigrant in Canada. Through the print the artist reflects on his experience working in the cafeteria at the University of British Columbia when he first moved to this country.

Gu Xiong is a multimedia Vancouver-based artist originally from China. His current work addresses issues of cultural identity through painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, video, photography, digital imagery, text, performance art and installation works. Xiong earned a Bachelor of Fine Art and Master of Fine Art at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and moved to Vancouver in 1990. He taught at the Emily Carr Institute between 1992 and 2000 and is currently an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia.