Richmond BC, Canada #richmondartgallerybc
Moderator Maria Filipina Palad leads an online discussion with ‘restaurant babies’ Tom Hsu, Eddie Kim and Jane Wong, who all grew up in their family’s restaurants. They will share stories of their experiences and how these places gave, and are still giving, bright futures to generations of immigrant families.
Session was hosted as a live-streamed event. View the video recording HERE.
About the Presenters:
Tom Hsu, based in Vancouver, is a visual artist whose work seeks to investigate the curious condition of spaces, and their correlation to the bodies that attend them. He comes from a base in analog photography, and this stability allows him to extend into made, found, and choreographic sculpture, all of which deal with the everyday mundane. He currently lives and works in Vancouver and holds a BFA in Photography from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. He has exhibited at Libby Leshgold Gallery, Centre A, Macaulay Fine Art, Gallery TPW, Yactac Gallery, Unit/Pitt, and Index Gallery.
Hsu’s family opened a cafe in Richmond called Leisure Tea and Coffee in 1996.
Eddie Kim received his MFA in Poetry from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is a Kundiman fellow from Seattle, who currently lives in Glasgow, Scotland as the owner of Gomo Kimchi, crafting homemade, small-batch kimchi. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Margins, The Collagist (now The Rupture), Pinwheel, Lantern Review, South Dakota Review, and others. His work has been nominated for ‘Best of the Net,’ and his poem, ‘Telephone of the Wind,’ was featured on Tracy K. Smith’s show, The Slowdown.
Jane Wong is the author of How to Not Be Afraid of Everything from Alice James Books (2021) and Overpour from Action Books. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. She is currently exhibiting in the Richmond Art Gallery’s NOURISH exhibition until April 3, 2022.
About the Moderator:
Maria Filipina Palad is a Curatorial Assistant at the Richmond Art Gallery. She holds a MA in Contemporary Arts from Simon Fraser University. There, her research focused on the aesthetics of VR art. Her essay An Aesthetics of Virtual Reality Art Through Embodied Immersion & Interaction was nominated for the Western Association of Graduate Schools /ProQuest Award for a Distinguished Master’s Thesis. As a Gallery Manager and Curator, she worked on projects in Vancouver, Singapore, and Manila.
She was born in the Philippines and spent some of her early years helping out at “Kristinne’s”, her mother’s grocery store.
This program is supported by the #RichmondHasHeart program.
