Art Writing for Snack Witch Joni Cheung’s Main Gallery Exhibition
We are delighted to share a beautiful poem by writer Christine Wu about Snack Witch Joni Cheung’s Main Gallery Exhibition, fill full feel full! Commissioned by Joni to create a reflection on the exhibition, Christine was inspired to focus on the project Songs to my Ancestors, which takes the form of an audio installation in the exhibition.
In addition, we are happy to share an article written by Laurabel Mba for Riddle Fence about Joni’s exhibition! Click here to check it out as well!
Snack Witch Joni Cheung’s exhibition is still up in our Main Gallery for a little over a week! We hope you’ll stop by for a visit and take in these thoughtful installations, which will remain on display until Saturday, July 5th at 5pm.
Click here to read Christine’s poem in PDF form, or read it below!
Art Writing by Christine Wu
THIS SONG IS DEDICATED
After Snack Witch Joni Cheung’s Songs to My Ancestors
to my mother and the radio
silence we maintain. To the kitchen that heard it all:
slow simmer of Saturday morning congee,
afternoon crinkle of grocery bags, Saturday night fights.
To the rice cooker beside the radio, its gentle click
coaxing us toward the table, its light a beacon
toward an illusion of family. To the earbuds
I stuffed into my ears to listen to the Top 10
at 10 and the syndicated late-night advice
show that made up my sex education, the static
I needed to fall asleep, drowning out the soundtrack
of my childhood: crash of metal spatula
against a worn steel wok, the ailing refrigerator
droning in the background of my father’s temper,
the murmur of my mother’s sadness. To AM1470,
its talk radio, Cantonese pop, the songs I couldn’t sing,
to Paula Tsui, Faye Wong, Eason Chan, their notes
returning as earworms crawling through the dust
of misunderstanding, of what’s left unsaid
across the distance required to untether myself
from home. This song is dedicated to itself,
to the ghosts that carry me across space and time
back to my mother’s kitchen. To the radio
on my mother’s kitchen counter,
antennaed toward heaven, its choir of voices
that kept her company in the loneliest place.
Author Bio
Christine Wu is a Chinese-Canadian poet who was born and raised on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver, BC). She has a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria, a MLIS from Dalhousie University, and a MA in English from the University of New Brunswick. In 2023, she was the winner of the RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award and in 2022, she was shortlisted for the RBC Writers’ Trust Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She now lives and writes in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS) in Mi’kma’ki.
Christine recently published a collection of poems titled Familial Hungers, and is book touring now! Click here to read more about the book!
Christine’s Instagram: @homemadepoem