Mary Sui Yee Wong Exhibit at Richmond Art Gallery
This spring, Richmond Art Gallery (RAG) presents an important new retrospective Restless by Nature: Mary Sui Yee Wong, 1990s. This solo exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore the breadth and depth of Wong’s under-recognized practice, marking a homecoming for the artist who was born in Hong Kong but raised in Vancouver.
The exhibition brings together a selection of works spanning sculpture, photography, video, and costume, including rarely seen or little documented pieces, and culminates in a new, performance-based work that speaks to the rise of violent anti-Asian sentiment across North America following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mary Sui Yee Wong Exhibit at Richmond Art Gallery
- Dates: April 12 to June 8, 2025
- Location: Richmond Art Gallery (7700 Minoru Gate #180, Richmond)
- Admission: By donation
Wong has a deep interest in materiality and site-specificity, and engages with themes of personal memory, familial legacy, cultural history, and Orientalism. Many of the works on display have been updated or rendered site-specific for the Gallery’s space and context.
Highlights include an updated series of photographs of her Yellow Apparel fashion line, featuring models such as local artists and cultural workers Emiko Marita, Henry Tsang, and Paul Wong. The brand name is a play on the once-popular brand American Apparel and the phrase “yellow peril,” the term given for the racist fear that the expansion of power and influence from Asia would be a danger to Western civilization. For Nature Morte, an installation that featured pieces of flocked furniture and other items, Wong is creating a new iteration with objects from Vancouver’s Chinatown.
In Gold Mountain, a new performance-based work, Wong will smash a maquette of a pagoda before
covering the resulting mound in gold leaf. The performance explores the visual currency of systemic
racism, as driven by a neoliberal economy, spotlighting the danger and destruction experienced by
countless members of the Asian community. Wong aims to invoke the act of witnessing by commanding
the audience’s attention, while forging something beautiful out of something ugly. The performance
shifts from an act of violence to a cathartic, reparative experience.
Commuters on the Canada Line will also have the chance to see Wong’s work TREASURE II at the
Lansdowne Station, co-presented by the Gallery, City of Richmond Public Art, and Capture Photography Festival. Mixing photographs of the sky with a centuries-old Chinese landscape painting, this poetic work honours two important pillars of Chinese culture: the paintings of times past and the precious elders of the present.
Mary Sui Yee Wong is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist who immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong in 1963, and is the daughter of the legendary Cantonese opera master Toa Wong. Working across disciplines that include sculpture, installation, video, and performance, Wong endeavours to defy fixedness in art as an act of resistance. She is known as an advocate and mentor within the Chinese community.
Scheduled Events
Opening Reception with Special Performance
Saturday, April 12 2025 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Performance by Mary Sui Yee Wong and Curatorial Tour with Zoë Chan
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Richmond Cultural Centre Performance Hall
Artist Salon with Mary Sui Yee Wong
Wednesday, May 28, 2025 12:00 to 1:00pm (online)
Find more RAG events online and follow on Facebook for updates.
